EGMONT KEY STATE PARK

By  Mike Miller November 3, 2025

Egmont Key State Park lies at the mouth of Tampa Bay. The island spans 328 acres and serves as both a state park and a national wildlife refuge.

Management falls to the Florida Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You can access the park only by boat or ferry.

The site holds the 1858 Egmont Key Lighthouse, and ruins of Fort Dade including gun batteries pepper the landscape. Beaches line the shores and trails lead through scrub habitat.

Egmont Key Lighthouse

The island formed 11,000 years ago. The Tocobaga people used it until the late 1700s. The Spanish mapped it in the 1750s. The British renamed it Egmont in 1763 after Lord Egmont. It passed to the U.S. in 1821.

A lighthouse rose in 1847 but a gale destroyed it in 1848. Builders replaced it in 1858, and it continues to operate as an active navigational aid, though visitors cannot enter or climb it.

Special events like the annual Discover Egmont Key Festival have historically allowed limited access in November, but no event is confirmed for 2025.

The island held Seminole captives after the Third Seminole War, and Union forces occupied it during the Civil War.

Workers built Fort Dade in 1898 for harbor defense. The fort housed 300 people. It included gun batteries like McIntosh and Howard. The military left in 1923.

The refuge started in 1974, and the site joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The state park formed in 1989.

The park sits in Hillsborough County southwest of St. Petersburg and Fort De Soto Park. It’s open daily from 8 AM to sunset.

You can catch a ride on one of the ferries that depart from Fort De Soto's Bay Pier. Trips run at various intervals throughout the day. Private boats can dock at marked areas. No roads reach the island.

Entry is free. Bring water and food because no restrooms or shops exist. Don't forget to pack out your trash. Avoid closed zones for birds. A ban applies to alcohol and drones.

You can walk the trails to ruins, swim at the beaches, snorkel near the reefs and view wildlife from afar. 

• Gopher tortoises burrow across the dunes.
  
  
• Ospreys and brown pelicans hunt in the bay.
  
  
• A 1928 Pan Am plane crashed off the west shore.
  
  
• The fort's jail now holds a visitor center.
  
  
• Tampa Bay pilots station here since 1926.
  
  
• Arrowheads mark Tocobaga campsites.
  
  
• Erosion claims land yearly to the Gulf.

EGMONT KEY STATE PARK WEBSITE

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