Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park: The Central Park of Miami

The southern third of Key Biscayne is called Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park in honor of William Calhoun "Bill" Baggs, who was editor of The Miami News from 1957 until his death in 1969. Baggs was an advocate of desegregation and an early opponent of the Vietnam adventure, and campaigned to keep the southern part of Key Biscayne free of development.

The park includes the best beach on the Atlantic coast of the United States that I have seen (though I used to love bodysurfing at Virginia Beach, escaping D. C. the summer I lived there) and the oldest standing structure in Dade County, the Cape Florida Lighthouse. (Key Biscayne is connected to downtown Miami by a toll bridge, the Rickenbacker Causeway, costing 75 cents for autos. The park has a $5 parking fee.) The road in from the Rickenbacker Causeway is South Crandon Boulevard.

The lighthouse was finished in 1825, then damaged during the Second Seminole War of 1836. The 1846 restored tower, which rises 95 feet from the beach just northeast of the southern tip of the island (key) is what is considered the oldest standing structure in Miami/Dade County. Heavy damages had been inflicted on the lighthouse during the US Civil War, and the lighthouse only become functional again after the US Coast Guard reparis during the 1970s.

Key Biscayne was a rendez-vous point for Black Seminoles (slaves who had joined the Seminole Indians), escaping slaves, and British sea captains who took the runaway slaves to the British Bahamas. In 2004 Cape Florida was recognized as an Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Site.

The lighthouse light made at least the southeastern tip of the island too bright for such pickups.

Lighthouse tours are at 10:00 AM. and 1:00 PM, Thursdays through Mondays (taking ten people at a time). Tours of the lighthouse keeper's house may also be available, if staff is available. The ascent within the lighthouse is 109 steps.