On a Saturday morning in late July, the attendant at the Founders Park gate waves through a line of cars with Florida plates and Monroe County stickers on the windshield, then stops the next one. The driver lives a short stretch up Old Highway, in one of the oceanfront estates locals still call Millionaire's Row. He hands over a Connecticut license. The gate reads that as a visitor, charges him the walk-up rate, and moves on to the next car.
This happens more than it should on this stretch of Plantation Key, where a meaningful share of homeowners keep an out-of-state license even after buying here, because they split the year between two addresses or haven't gotten around to the DMV. The park's system checks a driver's license for a Florida address as its default way of recognizing residents. If your license still says New York, New Jersey, or anywhere else, the gate has no way of knowing you own the house up the road unless you tell it.
The Fee Schedule Only Kicks In Once You Show Up
Founders Park sits at Mile Marker 87 on the Gulf side, a 40-acre village property with an Olympic-size pool, a marina, and miles of shoreline that Randall Adams neighbors pass on nearly every errand. Islamorada residents get in free. Everyone else pays by the visit, and the posted rates this summer break down like this:
| Weekday | Weekend / Holiday | Pool Add-On | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult (non-resident) | $8 | $15 | $3 |
| Youth / Senior (non-resident) | not listed separately | $10 | $2 |
| Islamorada resident | Free | Free | Free |
Run that against an actual family visit. Two adults and two kids showing up on a Saturday pay $50 at the gate before anyone touches the water, then another $10 for pool access, for $60 total. Do that five Saturdays over a summer that runs Memorial Day to Labor Day and you're near $300, paid to a park that would have let you in free the entire time if the gate recognized you as local.
The fix costs nothing and takes about the time it takes to park. If your Florida driver's license doesn't carry an Islamorada address, the park office issues a separate Resident Card. You bring a photo ID and either a current property tax bill or a deed. Renters bring a lease. That's the whole process, and it's the piece of local infrastructure that gets skipped most often by exactly the kind of owner Randall Adams attracts: someone who bought a second home here and never updated a license that still works fine everywhere else in their life.
What You're Actually Unlocking
Founders Park is not just a gate and a pool. Once you're recognized as a resident, the amenities that come free include:
- The Ron Levy Aquatic Center's Olympic-size pool, with water depths running from 4 to 12.6 feet and four springboards, the only pool of its size this far south in the United States
- A boat ramp and roughly 80-slip marina, with residents typically launching without the per-trailer fee that non-residents pay
- Pickleball courts, open for designated hours from 6 a.m. to noon
- Three miles of jogging trail looping the property
- A one-acre fenced dog park with separate large- and small-dog areas, splash stations, and shade structures
That dog park carries a name worth knowing if you live nearby: it's dedicated to Mike Forster, who served on the Islamorada Village Council, including time as mayor, before later being elected a Monroe County Commissioner. Forster opened Mangrove Mike's Café at Mile Marker 82 in 1998 and ran it alongside his civic work until he died from COVID-19 in September 2021. During the early months of the pandemic, he set up a nonprofit out of the restaurant that at its peak brought nearly 1,600 people a day to tents outside Mangrove Mike's for food, at a time when tourism had shut down and the hospitality jobs it supports went with it. The dog park bears his name because the man who spent two decades feeding the village also happened to love dogs, and Founders Park wanted the tribute to fit the person.
Mangrove Mike's itself is still open at that same MM 82 address, now run by Forster's niece, Paige Keil, and her husband, Asher Burris, who took over day-to-day management in November 2023. It remains a breakfast-and-lunch spot with the diner's fishing photos still on the walls, which is a detail worth knowing if you've been driving past it for months without stopping in.
The Bottleneck You Already Know About
If you've lived on this stretch of Plantation Key for any length of time, you already time your errands around one landmark: Betsy the Lobster, the 30-foot-tall, 40-foot-long sculpture that marks the entrance to Rain Barrel Village at Mile Marker 86.7. On busy weekends, cars slow and pull over so visitors can get a photo with her, which backs up northbound traffic right past the turn most Randall Adams residents use to reach Founders Park or U.S. 1 itself. If you're heading to the pool on a Saturday afternoon, going ten minutes earlier or waiting until after 4 p.m. avoids most of it.
The last year added a second, more temporary source of slowdown. The Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority spent 2025 replacing an aging water transmission main along Plantation Key, work that closed lanes intermittently near Mile Marker 88.5 and paused only for lobster mini-season and major holidays. As of last summer's reporting, the project was running ahead of its original timeline and on track to wrap around March 2026. If that held, the lane closures that shaped commutes through much of last year should be behind this stretch of highway by now, with any remaining work limited to punch-list items rather than active construction.
Where the Neighborhood Actually Eats
Two changes worth knowing if your regular rotation hasn't caught up: Marker 88, the beachfront restaurant that's been a fixture since 1967, reopened in June 2023 after a renovation that left it with two tiki bars, a new kitchen, and expanded dining areas across its 2.5-acre property. And on Old Highway, Lido 73 opened in fall 2024 from Tony and Isis Wright, the family behind Italian Food Company. It's built around the idea of a Mediterranean beach club, with boat access for anyone who'd rather arrive by water than fight the highway, and it preserved underwater photography from the site's earlier life as a dive center rather than stripping the building down to something generic.
Neither of these needs the Rain Barrel bottleneck to reach. Both sit close enough to Randall Adams that getting there by water, or by timing the drive around the golden hour crowd at Betsy, keeps the trip short.
The Pattern Underneath All of This
None of these things are secret. Founders Park posts its fee schedule. The dog park has a plaque. Betsy has been photographed more times than almost anything else in the Upper Keys. But living well on this stretch of Plantation Key seems to depend less on knowing these things exist and more on doing the small, unglamorous task of claiming them, whether that's a five-minute stop at the park office with a tax bill or learning which ten minutes of the day to avoid the lobster line. The neighborhood rewards residents who bother. It doesn't chase down the ones who don't.
If you're weighing whether Randall Adams or another stretch of the Upper Keys fits how you actually want to live on the water, The Florida Keys Sold Sisters can walk you through what daily life looks like block by block. Start Your Island Home Search — Schedule a Personal Consultation.
