Hugh Taylor Birch State Park

Hugh Taylor Birch was a successful attorney in Chicago when he first came south in 1893, looking for a quiet place away from the crowds. He found it on this barrier island and began buying land along the ocean, eventually holding a 3.5-mile ribbon of beachfront that he bought for roughly a dollar an acre. He called his estate Terramar, land to the sea, and in 1940, at the age of 90, he built a spare Art Deco home there that still stands near the park entrance and now serves as the visitor center.

Birch watched Fort Lauderdale grow up around him and worried that the whole coast would be paved and built over. So rather than sell to developers, he gave the core of his estate away. On the last day of 1941 the title passed to the state, and after a few years the land opened to the public as Hugh Taylor Birch State Park. It was an unusually far-sighted gift, and it is the only reason a slice of natural coastline survives here at all.

The park protects a maritime hammock, the dense, shady forest that once ran along much of Florida's coast before the beaches were developed. Gumbo-limbo trees with their peeling red bark, live oaks draped in the coastal light, cabbage palms, and strangler figs form a green tunnel over the trails, and mangroves fringe the water. It feels far older and wilder than the busy boulevards just outside the gate.

Running down the middle is a mile-long freshwater coastal dune lake, a rare kind of water body that sits just behind the beach, and it is calm enough to paddle. The hammock and lake together shelter a lot of wildlife for a city park: gopher tortoises, butterflies, and turtles, and more than two hundred kinds of birds passing through or nesting, from wading herons to hawks and ducks. Gray foxes even returned to the park a few years back after being gone for nearly a decade, a small sign that the habitat is doing its job.

Most people start on the water. You can rent a canoe, kayak, or stand-up paddleboard and drift the length of the freshwater lake, watching for turtles and birds, with the tree line reflected in the still surface. It is easy, family-friendly paddling, a world away from the ocean chop across the road.

On land, a flat two-mile paved road loops through the park and is closed enough to traffic to make a relaxed bike ride, skate, or walk under the canopy. Shady picnic areas and rentable pavilions overlook the channel, rangers lead free guided walks on certain days, and a beach crossover takes you straight to the Atlantic when you want sand and surf. Give it a half day and you can paddle, ride, picnic, and swim without ever leaving the island.

It is worth remembering, as you do, that none of this had to survive. Every other yard of this beachfront became hotels and high-rises. This green mile stayed because one man chose to give it away, and it remains the easiest place in Fort Lauderdale to step out of the city and into the Florida that was here first.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.