Happenin’
Places › Florida › Florida Keys › Bahia Honda State Park
Bahia Honda State Park, photo 1 of 3

Photo: Upstateherd / CC BY-SA 4.0

Beaches

Bahia Honda State Park

Big Pine Key, FL · Florida Keys$$8 per vehicle plus 50 cents a person; $4.50 solo driver

About

Three white-sand beaches share one narrow key here: Calusa on the calm Gulf side, Loggerhead and Sandspur on the Atlantic side, all of it fronting water clear enough to read the bottom from the surface. The old Bahia Honda Rail Bridge, a remnant of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad, arcs broken across the channel and frames nearly every photo people take from Calusa. The park runs daily snorkel boats out to Looe Key, a reef of elkhorn and star coral about seven miles offshore that many consider the best in the Keys.

Highlights

Three white-sand beaches: Calusa, Loggerhead, and SandspurSome of the clearest water in the Keys, shallow and swimmableViews of the old Bahia Honda Rail Bridge from Flagler's Overseas RailroadDaily snorkel boats to the Looe Key reef offshoreOceanside camping and cabins at mile marker 37First Florida beach ranked #1 on Dr. Beach's list (1992)

Getting there

36850 Overseas Highway, Big Pine Key, FL 33043

Related places

Smathers Beach Beaches

Smathers Beach

Key West, FL · Florida KeysFree

Smathers Beach runs a half mile along South Roosevelt Boulevard, a ribbon of imported Bahamian sand that the city trucks back in every time a storm hauls it off. The water sits…

Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park Beaches

Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park

Key Biscayne, FL · Miami

The 1825 Cape Florida Lighthouse anchors the southern tip of Key Biscayne, and you can climb its 109 steps to a wraparound balcony that looks out over Biscayne Bay and the open…

Honeymoon Island State Park Beaches

Honeymoon Island State Park

Dunedin, FL · Tampa Bay

Around 20 osprey nests are active each spring on Honeymoon Island, at the end of the Dunedin Causeway, and bald eagles have nested here since 2009. In 1940 some 50 palm-thatched…

More in Florida Keys

Others worth the drive in this corner of Florida.

All of Florida Keys →
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park Lakes & rivers

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

Key Largo, FL · Florida Keys$

The first undersea park in the country protects 70 nautical square miles of living coral reef off Key Largo, and the headline sight sits in 25 feet of water: Christ of the Abyss…

Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum Attractions

Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum

Key West, FL · Florida Keys$$

Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote in this 1851 limestone house from 1931 to 1939, turning out To Have and Have Not and the Kilimanjaro stories in the studio out back. The…

Dry Tortugas National Park Lakes & rivers

Dry Tortugas National Park

Key West, FL · Florida Keys$

Less than 1 percent of Dry Tortugas National Park is dry land: seven small islands in about 100 square miles of water, nearly 70 miles west of Key West. Fort Jefferson on Garden…

National Key Deer Refuge Gardens & wildlife

National Key Deer Refuge

Big Pine Key, FL · Florida Keys

This Big Pine Key refuge protects the Key deer, the world's smallest deer and a creature found nowhere else, with full-grown bucks no taller than a German shepherd. The easiest…

Part of these collections

The Best Florida Beaches20 places

The Best Florida Beaches

Start here if you haven't picked a coast yet. The wild beaches and the busy ones are mixed together on purpose; the separate Gulf and Atlantic lists split them out once you know which you want.

Best Beaches in the US26 places

Best Beaches in the US

Twenty-six US beaches, five of them in Hawaii, picked mostly for having nothing built behind the sand. Siesta Key, Coronado, Ka'anapali and Cape May are the town beaches we kept anyway.

Florida State Parks26 places

Florida State Parks

This list has 26 of Florida's 175 or so state parks. Book Blue Spring before you drive: it needs a day-use reservation.