Egmont Key sits three nautical miles west of Fort De Soto, a 440-acre wilderness island that has marked the mouth of Tampa Bay since Spanish explorers charted it in the sixteenth century. The island became a federal reserve in 1852, when the U.S.
Army began constructing Fort Dearborn on its northern tip—a brick citadel meant to guard the bay alongside Fort De Soto. By the Spanish-American War, the fort housed prisoners of war, and the island's garrison swelled to over 300 troops. Today the ruins stand silent among the scrub palms, their brick arches exposed to salt wind and the nesting colonies of brown pelicans and laughing gulls that now claim the site.
No bridge connects Egmont Key to the mainland. The only approach is by boat or kayak, and the island remains roadless, shopless, a state park managed jointly by Florida's park service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lighthouse, built in 1858 and automated in 1989, still sweeps its beacon across the Gulf each night, visible from Bradenton Beach on clear evenings. The island's beaches, made of crushed shell and quartz sand, curve around a tidal flat where bottlenose dolphins hunt mullet in the shallows. Gopher tortoises, a threatened species, dig burrows in the dune scrub, and loggerhead sea turtles crawl ashore to nest between May and October.
Egmont Key boat tours from Anna Maria Island typically depart from Holmes Beach or Bradenton Beach, crossing open water in under thirty minutes. Most operators combine the island stop with dolphin watching in the bay, sandbar swimming off Beer Can Island, or kayak circuits through the mangrove channels of Leffis Key. The park itself charges no entrance fee, though boat transportation is at the visitor's expense. The island has no facilities—no restrooms, no drinking water, no shade structures—so departures carry water, sunscreen, and portable toilets. The Florida heat peaks between June and September, and afternoon thunderstorms form quickly over the Gulf, so morning departures dominate the schedule.
2 hr
