Bahia Honda State Park has it all: Top campsites and cabins plus great snorkeling

People love the Bahia Honda State Park beaches — many people call them the best beaches in the Florida Keys.

Me? What I love best is the 100-year-old Bahia Honda Bridge. But the clear water and sandbars at low tide, the excellent beach-front camping sites and the terrific cabins are all exceptional.

Bahia Honda State Park is 45 minutes before Key West on the drive down the Keys, just beyond the Seven Mile Bridge.

It was preserved because of the historic 1912 saddleback bridge, a remnant of Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railway, and it’s unlike any other bridge you’ll find in the Keys.

The Bahia Honda bridge was the hardest of all bridges to build in Flagler’s railroad – more difficult than the longer Seven Mile Bridge – because the channel here is the deepest in the Keys. Because the tides are strong and would be higher during a storm, it was built taller than the other bridges. For additional strength, it is a trestle-style bridge, the only one like it in the Keys.

When the hurricane of 1935 forced the closure of the railroad, the bridge was revamped for cars. The lower level, which the trains had used, was too narrow for two lanes of cars, so they built the road on the top level. This must have been an amazing ride, and it was in use for decades. In fact, if you drove to Key West before 1972, your only choice was the road atop the old bridge.

Today, a section of the bridge has been removed at each end and a trail leads to a spot with a panoramic view of the old bridge and the entire area. 

Bahia Honda State Park beaches

When people hear these beaches called the best in the Keys, they probably envision an expansive, wide beach. And that’s why some people may be disappointed. Yes, this may be the Keys’ best beach, but beaches aren’t all that wonderful in the Florida Keys. (For spectacular beaches, I recommend the Gulf Coast from Naples to Sarasota.) 

Three natural, sandy beaches

• Scenic Calusa Beach is spectacularly situated with the old Bahia Honda bridge as a backdrop. It’s pretty and pretty small, however, and it fills up on sunny weekends. Calusa Beach is on the northwest side of the island facing the Overseas Highway.
• Loggerhead Beach is also on the western end of the island and faces the open Atlantic. It’s a very shallow beach with a large shallow sand bar a few feet offshore. After Hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022, it lost a lot of its sand.
• Sandspur Beach is nearly a mile long, narrow with shallow water and sand flats the whole way. Here, you can get away from the crowds if you’re willing to walk the beach. The restrooms are located near the parking areas.

The Bahia Honda State Park beaches are good for snorkeling, generally with very clear water. There is often sea grass piled along the beach: it’s good for the beach’s ecology, but plenty of visitors consider it unattractive. 

Bahia Honda State Park snorkeling, kayaking and hiking 

A popular activity at Bahia Honda is kayaking. With its clear Caribbean-quality water and abundant bird and marine life, the water here beckons to kayakers. Be aware, though, that currents and tides can be strong and this will be open-water kayaking. You can rent sit-on-top kayaks at the concession stand at the marina at Calusa Beach.

There are several alternatives for kayakers, including paddling two-thirds of a mile over open water to Little Bahia Honda Island and/or circumnavigating the island.

Here’s a Florida Rambler report on kayaking at Bahia Honda.

Snorkeling trips: A concessionaire runs snorkeling trips to Looe Key National Marine Sanctuary, which has impressive elkhorn and star coral as well as extensive marine life. Tickets for adults are $29.95; kids under 18 are $24.95. You can rent all the snorkeling gear too. Details about snorkeling from Bahia Honda.

Many people think the only place to find good snorkeling is at John Pennekamp State Park. Not true. The trips out of Bahia Honda take you to reefs that are just as impressive. (And snorkeling trips out of the two parks are priced identically.)

In addition, with its clear water, you can see sea life snorkeling right off the beaches at Bahia Honda.

Bahia Honda hiking: The park’s only nature trail Is near Calusa Beach, and it’s worth taking. The trail goes to the top of the Old Bahia Honda Bridge along a route that was once U.S. 1. There’s a great view from the top of the bridge. You can see the whole island and into the water, where you may see fish, rays or sea turtles. 

Bahia Honda State Park cabins: So nice, but impossible to reserve

The six cabins at Bahia Honda State Park are an excellent place to stay overnight. Everyone agrees on that, which is why it requires lots of planning to get a cabin here.

You can book a spot 11 months in advance through the parks reservations website. Even if you mark your calendar and try to book a spot the morning a date becomes available, you can still be out of luck. One reason is that when you snag a cabin date 11 months in advance, you can reserve that cabin for two weeks. If all six cabins are booked multiple days, there can be days when no cabins become available on the 11-months-out date. 

By Florida Keys standards, the cabins are a good deal: $120 per night, plus tax, May 1 – Oct. 31 and $160 per night Nov. 1 – April 30.

The Bahia Honda State Park cabins are built on pilings overlooking a lagoon, set apart of the busier day-use sections of the park. We’ve stayed in a cabin here and found it clean, comfortable, well-equipped and with a beautiful view.

Most folks, though, aren’t going to have the patience to figure out exactly when and how to book a cabin, so this experience remains largely out of reach for most. Still, it’s worth “vulturing” — watching the park reservations website for cancellations.

Bahia Honda camping: What a great location

Like the beaches, Bahia Honda State Park campsites were destroyed in Hurricana Irma. Our favorite — the 17 oceanfront sites in the Sandspur campground — reopened in May 2022, four and a half year after Hurricane Irma.

There are 75 campsites and they are just about as difficult to book as the cabins. If you don’t reserve 11 months in advance, your best bet is to monitor the website in the two weeks before your desired travel dates and watch for cancellations.

In 2022, we snagged two nights at one of the best tent campsites in the park — oceanfront site #72 in the Sandspur Camground. It’s the last campsite in the Sandspur group, so you have a camper on only one side. It’s located where the beach turns from a rocky shoreline to a sandy one, so you can enter the water right below your campsite.

The new Sandspur campsites have a gravel base — better for RVs, less great for tent campers like us. We could not pound our tent stakes into the hard ground and thus used coral rocks nearby to secure the corners. But that wouldn’t deter me. The fabulous view makes up for it all. One other downside: Most campsites in the park are close enough to hear traffic noise from the Overseas Highway.

Florida Rambler colleague Bob Rountree prefers the eight tent campsites n the Bayside Campground across from the cabins. At this point, though, all the campsites have gravel bases, so there’s little difference there. All sites are $36 per night. Florida residents over age 65 enjoy a 50 percent discount.

Bahia Honda camper tips

• There are no fire rings; the only place to build a fire is in the pedestal grill.
• Some of the sites are quite sunny, so if you have a shade tent or even a beach umbrella, bring it along.
• One thing to pack if you’re visiting Bahia Honda is water shoes. They will make it much easier for you to explore the splendid shoreline along the Atlantic here.

Look for the endangered Miami Blue butterfly

In our November 2022 camping trip, we heard a ranger describe the most endangered butterfly in Florida — the rare Miami Blue. They’re tiny — the size of your fingernail — and they were considered extinct until they were rediscovered at Bahia Honda in 1999. Today they are found in only a few places in the Keys.

Miami Blues love nickerbean plants and Bahia Honda takes extra care to maintain mounds of these prickly plants.

The ranger said it appeared the Miami Blue colony at Bahia Honda had been wiped out by recent Hurricane Ian.

But when we talked to the base of the Bahia Honda bridge, past a profusion of nickerbean plants, we saw several tiny blue butterflies fluttering so fast they were hard to photograph.

Miami Blues! Seemingly back.

Bahia Honda State Park

36850 Overseas Highway

Big Pine Key, Florida 33043

(305) 872-2353

Bahia Honda State Park camping reservations: Go to reserve.floridastateparks.org or call 1-800-326-3521, 

Day-use admission is $8 per vehicle plus 50 cents per person (a Monroe County tax)

Bahia Honda State Park map and brochure

Bahia Honda State Park website

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Resources for planning a Florida Keys vacation:

• Mile marker guide with dozens of stops to help make the most of your drive south.
• Florida Keys wildlife: Places to see animals
• Tiki bars: Soak up the Keys atmosphere
• Beaches in the Florida Keys

Special places to discover in the Lower Keys and Key West

• Some of the accommodations closest to Bahia Honda State Park are on Big Pine Key, where the Old Wooden Bridge Resort and Marina consists of a few cabins and 13 houseboats overlooking the water and the bridge to No Name Key. It’s a good place to rent a kayak too. It’s a block away from a classic Keys stop for lunch or dinner, No Name Pub.
• National Key Deer Refuge Nature Center is 10 minutes from Bahia Honda State Park on Big Pine Key. It’s free.
• Free things to do in Key West
• Key West on a budget: Accommodations, restaurants
• Florida Rambler guide to the Lower Keys
• Key West Butterfly Conservatory: A tranquil stop
• Audubon House, a lovely refuge in Key West
• Historic Key West Seaport, a colorful stroll
• Historic Key West Cemetery is full of stories
• Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West for beach and history
• Hogfish Grill: Where Key West locals go for fresh fish
• Key West chickens: Where did they come from and where do they go?