Everglades National Park Gulf Coast

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center opened here in December 2025 at 815 Oyster Bar Lane, replacing a building Hurricane Irma destroyed eight years earlier. It cost forty-seven million dollars and was built to survive the next one: everything is on the second floor, standing on tall pilings ten feet above Irma's storm surge, behind impact windows and concrete walls built to withstand a category five. A balcony takes in a hundred and eighty degrees of water and mangrove. It opens from nine in the morning until five, seven days a week. Boat tours run out among the mangrove islands into the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, where dolphins and brown and white pelicans are ordinary sightings. A newer tour goes to Sandfly Key, where a dock and a boardwalk of about a mile lead to a pioneer outpost. The kayak launch has been dredged so it works at low tide, and rangers lead kayak trips along the shoreline and up the Turner River. Canoes, kayaks and bicycles are rented through the concession, and an amphitheater takes ranger programs