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Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park Review

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Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park

Address: 1200 S. Crandon Blvd., Key Biscayne, Miami, FL, 33149 | Map It
Phone: 305/361-5811; 305/361-8779
www.floridastateparks.org/capeflorida

Category: Parks
Location: Key Biscayne and Virginia Key

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Fodor's Review:

Thanks to great beaches, sunsets, and a lighthouse, this park at Key Biscayne's southern tip is worth the drive. It has boardwalks, 18 picnic shelters, and 2 cafés that serve light lunches. A stroll or ride along walking and bicycle paths provides wonderful views of Miami's dramatic skyline. From the southern end of the park you can see a handful of houses rising over the bay on wooden stilts, the remnants of Stiltsville, built in the 1940s and now dying a natural death. Bill Baggs has bicycle rentals, a playground, fishing piers, and guided tours of the Cape Florida Lighthouse, South Florida's oldest structure. The lighthouse was erected in 1845 to replace an earlier one destroyed in an 1836 Seminole attack, in which the keeper's helper was killed. Plantings around the lighthouse and keeper's cottage recall the island's past. The restored cottage and lighthouse offer free tours at 10 AM and 1 PM Thursday to Monday. Be there a half hour beforehand.

Cost: $3 per single-occupant vehicle, $5 per vehicle with 2-8 people; $1 per person on bicycle, bus, motorcycle, or foot
Open: Daily 8-dusk, tours Thurs.-Mon. at 10 and 1; sign up 1 hr beforehand (on weekdays you can almost always simply show up shortly before tour time)

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