Leonida Keys in GTA 6: the islands, the bridge and the bars of Jason's home turf

The Leonida Keys are the chain of low, sun-bleached islands strung out below Vice City, and they are where GTA 6 starts for one of its two protagonists. Rockstar's site calls the region the "Gateway to Paradise": a place where the dress code is casual and the bars are loaded, sitting on the doorstep of some of the most beautiful and most dangerous water in America¹. It is Rockstar's Florida Keys, and it hangs south of the city and the wetlands exactly the way the real island chain does³.

What Rockstar has shown

The written copy is short and deliberately laid-back, but the screenshot captions do the real work. Rockstar's gallery for the region shows an iguana ambling in front of a mobility scooter, a seaplane crossing open water with a road bridge between two islands behind it, a beach bar with a man passed out among empty bottles at a picnic table, scuba divers among coral, eels and a sea turtle, and boats rafted together with people tanning and jet skiing¹. PC Gamer spotted a shark circling the partygoers in one of those images³. The Extended Look leaned further into the water, with long stretches of diving and jet ski footage over a crowded ocean⁷.

Jason's home turf

Two named characters are anchored here, and a third lives nearby. Jason Duval's official bio has him landing in the Keys after leaving the Army and working for local drug runners¹. Brian Heder is described as a smuggler from the golden age who still moves product through his boat yard and lets Jason live rent-free at one of his properties in exchange for favours¹. Cal Hampton, Jason's friend, "feels safest hanging at home, snooping on Coast Guard comms with a few beers and some private browser tabs open"¹.

Trailer 2 opens on Jason on the roof of a shabby beach property joking about fixing leaks, then follows him inland to collect Lucia from prison. PC Gamer read that opening as Jason living in Brian's property and doing jobs instead of paying rent, which places the first hours of the game in the Keys⁴⁵.

The island highway and the Seven Mile Bridge

There is a road through the Keys, and the evidence for it is better than for most of the map. Rockstar's own caption for the region describes a bridge carrying cars between two islands behind a passing seaplane¹, and Trailer 1's road signage points to the Keys alongside Port VC, Vice Beaches, Catalan Boulevard and Kelly County, which means the islands are reachable by road and not only by boat⁹.

Miami New Times went further and matched an aerial trailer shot of a long, low bridge over open water to the real Seven Mile Bridge, which links the middle and lower Florida Keys and is one of the longest bridges in the United States⁸. In reality that bridge is the showpiece of the Overseas Highway, the single road that ties the whole chain to the mainland. If Rockstar has built anything close to its scale, the drive south from Vice City becomes one of the most exposed and distinctive roads in the series, with open water on both sides for a long stretch⁸³. Our secret page on the Seven Mile Bridge covers the old broken span beside it and the long-running story that the Keys were cut from the 2002 Vice City.

Rockstar has not named the road, given its length, or confirmed that it runs unbroken from the mainland to the last island¹³.

The Rusty Anchor and Keys bar culture

The Rusty Anchor is one of the few individual venues anyone has named in the Keys. GamesRadar's location guide describes the region as somewhere you unwind, either at a boat party out on the bay or in one of the dive bars like The Rusty Anchor². The name does not appear in Rockstar's own copy, which never names a bar, so treat it as likely rather than certain¹².

What Rockstar does show is a drinking culture built to feel lived-in. Its Keys copy tells you to get your buzz on and pull up a deck chair, and one screenshot shows a busy beach bar exterior with a couple kissing and people spilling onto the porch¹. Another official image shows Jason and Cal playing pool inside a bar, the clearest sign that at least some Keys bars are walk-in spaces rather than locked exteriors¹. Brian Heder's tagline about nothing being better than a Mudslide at sunset belongs to the same world¹.

What there is to do

GamesRadar singles out the Keys as the most touristy corner of Leonida: waterside bars and beach shops alongside scuba diving and yachting, with reef life including giant turtles and predators in the same water². Rockstar's captions point to specific activities rather than scenery: Jason holding a fishing rod on a boat while Cal looks through binoculars, Jason paddling a Crest Kayak, and divers working through coral¹. None of fishing, diving or kayaking has been confirmed as a full mechanic, but all three appear as captioned activities rather than background¹.

Smuggling on the water

Under the tourist economy sits a smuggling one. Brian's boat yard is the base, Jason does his jobs, and Cal listens to the Coast Guard¹. A road with open water on both sides, a boat yard and a friend monitoring patrol traffic is a setup built for runs between the islands and the mainland, though Rockstar has not described a single mission in the region yet¹³.

The real Florida Keys

The parallel is not subtle. The real Keys run south-west from Miami below the Everglades, and outlets covering the map read the Vice City skyline in the background of Rockstar's Keys screenshots the same way³. The bridge match is the strongest single piece of evidence that Rockstar modelled the road on the real Overseas Highway rather than inventing a generic island chain⁸. Fan maps go further and name individual islands, such as a Key Lento for Key Largo, but that work leans partly on leaked material and is not confirmed⁶.

What is still unknown

Rockstar has not said how many islands there are, how far the chain runs, what the road is called, or whether you can drive from Vice City to the last island without a break¹³. No official map has been published.