Homestead is the last real town before the road runs out at the tip of the Florida peninsula. It sits between two national parks — Everglades National Park to the west and Biscayne National Park to the east — and most visitors pass through on their way to one or the other.
The town was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and largely rebuilt since. It is not a place you would visit for its own sake, but it has the practical virtues of affordable motels, a Walmart, and the fruit stands along Krome Avenue selling mangoes, avocados, and tropical fruit you will not find further north. The Homestead-Miami Speedway draws NASCAR crowds several times a year. Just north of town, eccentric Latvian immigrant Edward Leedskalnin's Coral Castle is one of Florida's strangest roadside attractions, and the Fruit and Spice Park grows more tropical species than anywhere else in the country.
The main reason to stop here is the parks. The Ernest Coe Visitor Center at the Everglades' main entrance is 15 minutes west, and the road from there leads through sawgrass prairie to Flamingo on Florida Bay. Biscayne's Dante Fascell Visitor Center, with boat trips to the offshore reefs and keys, is a short drive east along Canal Drive.