Fort De Soto Park - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

Fort De Soto Park is a tropical paradise to explore with numerous attractions. Spanning over 1,050 acres, the park offers miles of picturesque shoreline perfect for swimming around the artificial islands and fishing off the piers. Visitors can also go kayaking or canoeing around the estuaries. Other great activities include camping, canoe races, bird watching tours and history discovery runs.

North Beach at Fort DeSoto Park in Pinellas County, Florida is a destination for beach lovers from around the world. This unique beach offers a range of activities that are perfect for both families and solo travelers. The most popular activity is swimming in the clear, shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Visitors also enjoy sunbathing on the powder-soft white sand, fishing off the pier, or exploring nearby trails and kayaking through mangrove tunnels.

Egmont Key Lighthouse is a historic lighthouse located in Hillsborough County. Its construction was completed in 1858 and it has been under National Park Service protection since in 1998. The lighthouse stands at an impressive 71 feet tall and provides a unique ambiance to the beaches of the area, where locals and tourists explore its ruins for a glimpse into the past. Even after its decommissioning in 1958, this Lighthouse continues to serve as an iconic symbol of Hillsborough.

A cable-stayed bridge spanning the Lower Tampa Bay connecting St. Petersburg, Florida to Terra Ceia. The current Sunshine Skyway opened in 1987 and is the second bridge of that name on the site.

The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is an iconic symbol of Hillsborough County Completed in 1987, this bridge stands across a four-mile span of Tampa Bay and is a beautiful sighting at sunrise or sunset. A cable-stayed bridge with several concrete piers, it also boasts a unique curved shape with fans for extra support, making it a creative engineering masterpiece as well as an eye-catching structure.

Located on Egmont Key, at the mouth of Tampa Bay, it can only be reached by boat or ferry. The Egmont Key Lighthouse and the ruins of Fort Dade, a Spanish–American War era fort, are located in the park. The entire 328 acres (133 ha) island is actually part of Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge.