Bring your binoculars for fall birding at Curry Hammock State Park, where migrating raptors cruise overhead by the hundreds following a major flyover route. The main portion of the park, on the Atlantic Ocean side of US 1, features a campground with sea breezes, a picnic area, and a small beach for launching kayaks or wading in the shallows. A...
A toilet, carved in rock, flushed by the sea. Streets laid out through a tropical forest. Grand homes built by wreckers, who rowed out to the coral reefs to claim the ruins of Spanish ships that shredded in the shallows. It was a rough and rowdy place, this island where Dade County began long before Miami showed up. Infamous wrecker...
Once destined for the developer’s bulldozer, Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Preserve State Park is an incomparable botanical treasure. From the moment you start through the archway following the pavement that was to lead to the condo complex, you’re immersed in the dark shade of a thicket of tropical trees. Surrounding you is the highest concentration of champion trees in...
To step into a virgin tropical hammock – there’s nothing like it on earth, and certainly nowhere else in Florida or the United States will you find one so pristine, with 280 acres of large and ancient tropical trees – and the clouds of mosquitoes that surround them. The delight of Lignumvitae Key is its namesake, the lignumvitae. Blooming with...
Accessible only by boat and only to scuba divers and snorkelers, San Pedro Underwater State Park offers exploration of a Spanish ship that sank in 1733 near Indian Key. Wreckers undoubtedly claimed most of her bounty, and in the 1960s, she was stripped of most historic remains. The site, however, is marked by ballast stones, interpretive information, and replicas of...
In 1908, Henry Flagler opened a quarry on Windley Key during construction of his Overseas Railroad. The Florida Keys are made of coral rock, and it is at this geological site that you’ll peer deeply into the island’s fossil past, frozen in the walls of these massive quarries. At first, no one thought much of the rock. It was used...