Boca Chita Key

Boca Chita Key is a 32-acre island in Biscayne Bay, best known for its 65-foot stone lighthouse, small harbor and preserved 1930s retreat. It is the park’s most visited island, and it is worth a stop if a boat trip is already part of your day. There is no road access; arrive by private boat or boat tour, then give yourself time to see more than the lighthouse.

The lighthouse rises 65 feet above the harbor. It was built as an ornamental landmark, not as a navigation light to guide ships through safe channels. If staff have opened the observation deck, the view takes in nearby islands, Biscayne Bay, the ocean and Miami’s skyline. Don’t count on being able to climb it; deck access depends on staff availability. From shore, frame the tower with the curved seawall and water to show how it sits within the harbor.

A half-mile path starts just east of the restrooms and runs to the island’s south end, near the pavilion. It’s a good way to get beyond the harbor and see more of Boca Chita’s wooded interior. Mosquitoes are around year-round and can be worse in warm months, so insect repellent is useful if you plan to walk.

Mark and Olive Honeywell bought Boca Chita in 1937 as a retreat from their Miami vacation home and a place to gather friends. They built the lighthouse in 1938 and added a chapel, barn, engine house, pavilion, stone walls and a stone footbridge over the next several years. The island was sold in 1945; the National Park Service bought it in 1985. Eleven acres around the historic buildings became the Boca Chita Key Historic District in 1997.

Hurricane Andrew destroyed much of the island’s vegetation in 1992. Replanting and natural regrowth brought back a landscape similar to the one from the Honeywell years. The story is easy to miss if you focus only on the lighthouse, but it helps explain why the wooded island looks the way it does today.