Part of Alligator Alley, one of two routes crossing the Florida Everglades, was closed when smoke from a 3,000-acre brush fire cut visibility to zero.
The 60-mile stretch of Interstate 75 in the middle of the state was closed at about 9 p.m. Tuesday night, the Florida Highway Patrol said. Troopers didn't know when it would reopen.
"It's intense out here," FHP Lt. Roger Reyes told The Miami Herald. "Flames are shooting skyward (and) black smoke is billowing across the road."
The shutdown portion of the interstate ran from State Road 29 in Collier County in the west to U.S. 27 in Broward County in the east.
Alligator Alley is one of two routes crossing the Florida Everglades; the other is the Tamiami Trial between Miami and Naples farther south.
Meanwhile, a wildfire that consumed 1,300 acres in southwest Florida, prompting Florida Gulf Coast University to cancel classes on Tuesday, was 100 percent contained, said Gerry Lacavera, wildfire mitigation specialist for the state Division of Forestry.
At one point over the holiday weekend, the fire got within 40 feet of the campus. Classes were expected to resume Wednesday.
In north Florida, more than 100 firefighters in the remote John Bethea State Forest north of Baxter near the Georgia border gained ground on a blaze covering nearly 3,000 acres. The blaze was 75 percent contained by late Tuesday, according to a spokesman with the forestry division.