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Camping on the sand itself is not permitted in Florida, but a number of parks put you a short walk behind the dune, and those sites book out months ahead.
Fort De Soto in Pinellas County has waterfront sites. Bahia Honda in the Keys is the one everybody wants. Anastasia in St Johns County and Fort Clinch in Nassau both sit inside the dune line. Gamble Rogers in Flagler County puts you across the road from the water. On the Gulf, St Joseph Peninsula in Gulf County, Grayton Beach and Topsail Hill in Walton, Henderson Beach in Okaloosa and St Andrews in Bay County. Curry Hammock in Monroe County is another. Two more are closed to campers for now: St George Island in Franklin County, where the campground shut for renovation in July 2026, and Cayo Costa in Lee, the boat-in island, where overnight stays have been closed since July 2025.
Pinellas County. 1,136 acres across five connected islands at the mouth of Tampa Bay, the largest park Pinellas County runs and one that takes more than 2.7 million visits a year. North Beach and East Beach give almost three miles of white sand with swim centers and food concessions.
Open the guide →Monroe County. Sandspur, Loggerhead and Calusa are the three beaches, and the sand here is real sand rather than the thin cover most of the Keys have, because of the way the current works through Bahia Honda Channel.
Open the guide →St. Johns County. The park covers 1,700 acres just across the bridge from downtown St. Augustine and takes in four miles of Atlantic beach, reached by boardwalk over the dunes. It was established in 1949.
Open the guide →Nassau County. It was named for General Duncan Lamont Clinch of the Seminole wars. No shot was ever fired at it in anger. Confederate troops held it briefly in 1861 and pulled out in 1862, and Union forces walked back in without a fight, which is the whole of its combat record and a large part of why so much of it survives.
Open the guide →Flagler County. Open 8:00am to sundown, 365 days a year. $5 a vehicle for up to eight people, $4 for a single-occupant vehicle, $2 on foot or by bicycle, and camping from $28 a night plus tax.
Open the guide →Gulf County. This park takes up the St. Joseph Peninsula at Cape San Blas, near Port St. Joe, a strip of sand with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and St. Joseph Bay on the other.
Open the guide →Walton County. Nearly 2,000 acres of white quartz sand, dune and coastal forest, and the beach is regularly named one of the best in the United States. Western Lake, 100 acres of it, is one of three coastal dune lakes inside the park, a kind of lake found in only two states and four countries.
Open the guide →Walton County. The dunes here are the tall ones, high enough that the park is named for them, and they are left alone rather than walked over. Two coastal dune lakes, Campbell Lake and Morris Lake, sit behind the beach holding fresh water that mixes with salt when the sand bar breaks.
Open the guide →Okaloosa County. Thirty-foot white sand dunes, and the park exists to hold on to what the state calls Destin's last genuine stretch of coastal dune scrub. A hiking trail runs back through that dune and scrub.
Open the guide →Bay County. The state bought the first 302 acres from the federal government in 1947 at two dollars and fifty cents an acre, and opened the park to the public in 1951 once the bridges made it reachable.
Open the guide →Franklin County. Nine miles of beach at the east end of the island, four of them reachable by car on the main drive, and Dr. Beach named it the best beach in the country in 2023.
Open the guide →Monroe County. At 56200 Overseas Highway in Marathon, open 8 a.m. until sunset, 365 days a year, for $4.50 on your own or $5.50 for two or more people. The park covers 1,000 acres and is the largest undeveloped parcel between Key Largo and Big Pine Key.
Open the guide →Lee County. Nine miles of beach run down the Gulf side and almost none of it is built on. Behind the sand are pine flatwoods, oak palm hammock and mangrove swamp, and the island carries gopher tortoises, ospreys and a heavy passage of migrating birds in spring and fall.
Open the guide →By car, through one of three entrances in three different cities, which do not connect to each other inside the park: the Homestead entrance, which leads down the main park road to Flamingo on the coast; the Miami entrance at Shark Valley, with trails, an observation tower and tram tours; and the Everglades City entrance on the Gulf coast, for boat tours and the mangrove waterways.
By ferry, seaplane, private boat or a permitted charter: the park is about 70 miles west of Key West and no road or bridge reaches it.
Three: Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas. The National Park Service runs eleven sites in the state in all.
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