Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Marathon Marathon, FL

Marathon is a city spread across a chain of islands in the middle Florida Keys, including Knight's Key, Boot Key, Key Vaca, Fat Deer Key, Long Point Key, Crawl Key, and Grassy Key, in Monroe County.

Marathon is a relatively new city: it was incorporated in 1999, even though its islands had been settled for many years before that.

The name Marathon came from Florida East Coast Railway workers who, working night and day to build Henry Flagler's railroad through the Keys, complained the unrelenting job was 'a real marathon.'

Marathon's city limits stretch along the Overseas Highway from Mile Marker 47, at the east end of the Seven Mile Bridge, to Mile Marker 61, at the west end of Tom's Harbor Bridge.

The original Seven Mile Bridge, built for Flagler's railroad, now serves as a walkway and fishing pier leading out to tiny historic Pigeon Key.

The 2020 census counted 9,689 residents in Marathon, living in about 4,000 households, while the city has roughly 6,500 housing units in total.

Only about 60% of Marathon's homes are owner-occupied, and the median value of an owner-occupied home there is about $725,800.

Marathon is home to the Turtle Hospital, founded by Richie Moretti in 1986, the first state-approved veterinary hospital in the United States devoted entirely to sea turtles; it has rehabilitated and released more than 3,000 of them.

On Grassy Key, within Marathon, the Dolphin Research Center, founded in 1984, studies and cares for Atlantic bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions in natural seawater lagoons.

Sombrero Beach, Marathon's city beach, is one of the few wide white-sand beaches in the Florida Keys and a designated nesting site for loggerhead sea turtles.