South Florida Coastal Parks: A Tidal Atoll Pool and a Lawyer Who Bought the Beach for a Dollar an Acre
Four coastal parks run up the southeast coast from Coral Gables to North Palm Beach. None of them require a day-use reservation, which in 2026 is worth saying out loud.
Matheson Hammock Park, Coral Gables
Miami-Dade calls this its first park, acquired in 1931 and named for the pioneer W.J. Matheson. The draw is the atoll pool, a man-made basin that Biscayne Bay flushes clean on the tide. What you swim in today is a rebuild. Hurricane Irma wrecked the pool in 2017, and a FEMA-funded restoration with dredging, three culverts, an interior retaining wall and a stone breaker wall was finished in April 2022. The park covers 462 acres. Entry is seven dollars a car on weekdays and ten on weekends and holidays, plus tax. This is a county park, not a state park, so a state pass will not get you in.
Oleta River State Park, North Miami
A thousand and forty-three acres inside the city limits, which Florida State Parks calls the largest urban park in the state. Fifteen miles of off-road bike trail and fourteen more of multiuse trail. It opened in 1986 with Marjory Stoneman Douglas at the ceremony. Six dollars per vehicle. The park fills up on weekends and once it closes for the day it does not reopen, so arrive early rather than late.
Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, Fort Lauderdale
A Chicago lawyer named Hugh Taylor Birch started buying oceanfront here in 1893 for roughly a dollar an acre and eventually held three and a half miles of it. In 1940, at ninety years old, he built an Art Deco and Mediterranean house he called Terramar, land to the sea, on a 180-acre parcel. He signed the title over to the state on December 31, 1941, effective on his death, and died on January 7, 1943. Terramar still stands and is free with park entry, open weekdays 9 to 4. Six dollars per vehicle, four if you are alone. The floating dock has been closed since May 2026, and the large pavilions and two restroom blocks since September 2025.
John D. MacArthur Beach State Park, North Palm Beach
A 1,600-foot boardwalk crosses mangrove and seagrass to reach the sand, over what the park’s own brochure calls the most productive estuarine system in Lake Worth Lagoon. It is also a serious sea turtle beach: the park reports a record season of 2,068 loggerhead nests and 2,116 green turtle nests. Three hundred and twenty-five acres, five dollars per vehicle. Two restrooms are currently out of service, with portable units at the nature center.
Only four Florida state parks currently require a day-use reservation, and none of these is one of them.
