Peanut Island Park

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Peanut Island is a 37.44-acre county park, and the first thing to know is that there is no bridge and no parking lot: access is by boat only. There are two boat docks, on the west and east sides, and fourteen day-use boat slips. The island has both guarded and unguarded swimming beaches and a snorkeling lagoon, and a limited number of reserved camping places in designated areas. The island itself covers seventy-nine acres, of which the county park is the portion named above. None of it is natural: dredging in 1918 created the island, the inlet and the Port of Palm Beach at the same time. It was called Inlet Island first and took the name Peanut Island from a peanut oil shipping operation planned for it that failed in 1946. A blast shelter was built here in secret for John F. Kennedy shortly after his election in 1960, code-named Detachment Hotel; it was open for tours for some years and closed in October 2017. A renovation costing thirteen million dollars in 2005 produced the park as it stands, with a pier, a man-made reef, paths right around the island, gardens and picnic sites