No Name Pub began, by its own account, around 1931 as a general store and bait and tackle shop on Big Pine Key, on the road that led to the No Name Key ferry. The first Overseas Highway had opened in 1928 with a gap in the middle of it: drivers boarded a car ferry at Lower Matecumbe, crossed some forty miles of open water, landed at No Name Key and drove on to Key West, passing the store on the way. When the highway bridges finally closed the ferry gap in 1938 the traffic moved to the new road. By the pub's telling a restaurant had been added in 1936, and by the mid 1950s the store and the tackle shop had both shut, leaving the bar and the restaurant on a road that now led nowhere in particular.
Customers began stapling signed dollar bills to the walls, usually dated to the 1970s, and the habit never stopped. Every surface inside, ceiling included, is layered in bills carrying names, dates and messages left by people who went out of their way to find the place. Estimates of the total start around ninety thousand dollars and run to two hundred thousand and beyond. The pub's own motto is that it is a nice place if you can find it.
Getting there
24.6982, -81.3512
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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