Best Places to Visit on The Florida Coast

No one in Florida is ever more than sixty miles from saltwater. The state runs 825 miles of accessible beach and roughly 8,400 miles of tidal shoreline, second only to Alaska, which means the hard part of a Florida trip is not finding the coast. It is choosing which stretch of it. What follows is a run down each shore, from the calm Gulf sand of the west to the reef and history of the Atlantic side, with the waters that make each place worth the drive.

The Gulf coast: calm water and long sunsets

The west coast faces the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf is a gentler body of water than the open Atlantic. It is nearly enclosed by the continent, so the surf arrives soft and the shallows run warm and far. That is the reason families gravitate here, and the reason the sunsets have their reputation: with nothing between you and the horizon but flat water, the light has room to work.

Tampa sits on the largest open water estuary in the state, Tampa Bay, and the bay shapes the city. There are nature preserves and paddling trails within minutes of downtown, three professional sports teams, and Ybor City, the old cigar district that now runs on breweries and late nights and a well earned reputation as one of the more haunted corners of the state. Follow the coast south and you reach Fort Myers, seven miles of white sand and the gateway to the islands offshore.

Sanibel and the shelling coast

Sanibel Island is famous among beachcombers for a quirk of geography. Most barrier islands run parallel to the coast; Sanibel lies on an east to west axis, so it acts like a net, catching shells that ride the Gulf currents up from the Caribbean. Walk the beach at low tide and you understand why people stoop and hunt for hours. It is a place the wood chart flatters, since the shoals and passes that make the shelling so good are exactly the depths a carved chart puts on your wall.

Further south, Naples trades the wild for the refined: sugar sand, golf, and a fishing pier first built in 1888 that remains the town's symbol and its best spot to watch for dolphins at dusk. It draws a famous crowd, Mike Ditka and Larry Bird and Bob Seger among the residents, but the pier at sunset costs nothing and delivers the same view.

Siesta Key and the quartz sand

Siesta Key is a barrier island off Sarasota, and its beach is close to a geological accident. The sand is almost pure quartz, ground so fine and white that it stays cool underfoot in the August sun. Against it, the Gulf turns a shade of turquoise that looks imported from somewhere farther south. The town behind the beach is small and walkable, the kind of place where the evening plan is a drink, a slow walk, and the sunset. If Sarasota has kept the top spot on retirement lists for years, this island is a large part of the argument: mild winters, easy water, and a pace built for staying a while. A Siesta Key wood chart carries the tidal pools and the reef line home with you.

The Keys and the only living reef

The Florida Keys curl off the tip of the peninsula toward Cuba, which sits just ninety miles south of Key West. This is the southern end of the country, and it has always attracted people who did not fit anywhere else: pirates and smugglers first, then the writers and musicians who gave the islands their reputation. Ernest Hemingway wrote here, Jimmy Buffett played here, and both stayed.

The Keys are known for what is under the water more than what is on the beach. Running just offshore is the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, more than 2,900 nautical miles of protected water. It is the reason people come to snorkel, dive, and fish rather than sunbathe, and it is the kind of underwater terrain that only really makes sense once you see its depths laid out on a chart.

Miami Beach: art, water, and late nights

Miami Beach has long been the place to see and be seen. South Beach runs on nightlife and art deco pastels; the Wynwood district across the bay turned a warehouse quarter into open air galleries and murals. Between the clubs and the coffee and the Latin American culture that shapes the whole city, it is easy to forget the ocean, but the clear Atlantic shallows are the reason the recreation never stops, and the depths just past the sandbar are what a wood chart records.

Palm Beach and the golf coast

Palm Beach holds more golf courses than anywhere else in the country, over 160 of them, so if the trip is built around the game this is the coast to book. The Intracoastal Waterway separates the island from the mainland and keeps it quiet, which is much of the appeal. The Atlantic breeze does the rest.

Eighty miles up the same shore is the Treasure Coast, named for the Spanish galleons that wrecked on the reefs just offshore. In 1622 the Atocha and the Santa Margarita went down carrying more than forty tons of gold, copper, and silver. Mel Fisher of Sebastian spent sixteen years searching before his team pulled the haul up on July 20, 1985, nearly 370 years after it sank. The reefs that sank those ships are still there, right where a chart would put them.

St. Augustine, the oldest city

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the country, founded well before Plymouth or Jamestown. Ponce de Leon landed near here in 1513 while hunting the Fountain of Youth, and the city has been layering history on its cobblestones ever since: the oldest masonry fort in the United States at Castillo de San Marcos, the first Catholic congregation in North America, the oldest wooden schoolhouse. The St. Augustine Lighthouse, built between 1871 and 1874, still works, and still has a name as the most haunted lighthouse in America. The ghost tours here are a whole industry, and the Matanzas Bay it watches over is worth a chart of its own.

Bring the water home

From the calm Gulf sand of Sanibel to the reef off Key West to the old streets of St. Augustine, the Florida coast keeps pulling people back, year after year, until the place becomes part of the family story. That is what a wood chart is built to hold: every pass, shoal, and channel carved to its true depth, so the water you keep returning to has a place on your wall the rest of the year.

Planning a trip, or remembering one? Explore the Florida wood charts and find your stretch of coast.