A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Florida

Florida State Capitol Complex

Tallahassee, FL

Tallahassee's 22-story New Capitol tower stands right beside the fully restored 1902 Old Capitol, preserved on purpose instead of demolished.

Florida Historic Capitol Museum

Tallahassee, FL

The restored 1902 dome and chambers of Florida's capitol, whose core dates to 1845, in front of the modern tower.

Castillo de San Marcos

St. Augustine, FL

The oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, built by Spain out of coquina shell-stone starting in 1672.

Fort Caroline National Memorial

Jacksonville, FL

A memorial to the French Huguenot colony founded on the St. Johns River in 1564 and destroyed by the Spanish the next year.

De Soto National Memorial

Bradenton, FL

A memorial to Hernando de Soto's 1539 landing, the start of the first large European expedition into the interior of what is now the United States.

Kennedy Space Center

Merritt Island, FL

The launch complex that sent Apollo to the Moon and the shuttle to orbit.

HistoryMiami Museum

Miami, FL

The museum of South Florida history, from the Tequesta people to the city's growth into a crossroads of the Americas.

Tampa Bay History Center

Tampa, FL

A museum on the Tampa Riverwalk covering 12,000 years of Gulf Coast history, from the first peoples to the modern city.

Gold Coast Railroad Museum

Miami, FL

Home of the Ferdinand Magellan, the Pullman car rebuilt for presidential use, which carried Roosevelt, Truman on his 1948 whistle-stop tour, Eisenhower and Reagan.

St. Petersburg Museum of History

St. Petersburg, FL

A city museum with a replica Benoist airboat, the type flown on January 1, 1914 by the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line, the first scheduled airline.

Orange County Regional History Center

Orlando, FL

Central Florida's history museum, in the restored 1927 county courthouse downtown.

American Space Museum

Titusville, FL

A museum of the space program built around artifacts donated by the engineers and workers who launched it.

Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts

Eatonville, FL

A museum in Eatonville, incorporated in 1887 as one of the first Black-governed towns in America and the hometown of writer Zora Neale Hurston.

Ritz Theatre & Museum

Jacksonville, FL

A museum of Black history in LaVilla, once called the Harlem of the South, and the hometown of James Weldon Johnson.

Naples Depot Museum

Naples, FL

The 1927 railroad depot that brought the first passenger trains to Naples, now a museum of Southwest Florida transportation.

The Ringling

Sarasota, FL

The estate of circus king John Ringling, with his Venetian Gothic mansion and a museum of the American circus.

McLarty Treasure Museum

Sebastian, FL

A museum on the site of a salvage camp from the 1715 Spanish treasure fleet, wrecked by a hurricane off this coast.

Florida Air Museum

Lakeland, FL

The aviation museum at the Sun 'n Fun fly-in, one of the largest gatherings of aircraft in the world.

Elliott Museum

Stuart, FL

A museum founded in honor of inventor Sterling Elliott, with Treasure Coast history and a collection of classic cars.

Polk County History Center

Bartow, FL

A history museum and genealogy library in the restored 1908 Polk County courthouse in Bartow.

Bay of Pigs Monument

Miami, FL

A memorial with an eternal flame on Cuban Memorial Boulevard in Little Havana honoring Brigade 2506, which landed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

Miami, FL

The Italian Renaissance–style estate of industrialist James Deering, completed in 1916 on Biscayne Bay.

The Barnacle Historic State Park

Miami, FL

The 1891 home of boat designer Ralph Munroe, the oldest house in Miami-Dade County still on its original site.

Stranahan House

Fort Lauderdale, FL

A 1901 trading post and home on the New River, the oldest surviving structure in Broward County.

Flagler Museum

Palm Beach, FL

Whitehall, the 1902 mansion of Henry Flagler, whose railroad opened up Florida's east coast.

Henry B. Plant Museum

Tampa, FL

The 1891 Tampa Bay Hotel, whose minarets mark the spot where Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders gathered in 1898.

Ybor City Museum State Park

Tampa, FL

A museum in the 1896 Ferlita Bakery telling the story of Ybor City, once the cigar capital of the world.

Fort De Soto Park

Tierra Verde, FL

A park at the mouth of Tampa Bay with the remains of a coastal fort built in 1898.

Freedom Tower

Miami, FL

A 1925 newspaper tower that served from 1962 to 1974 as the Cuban Refugee Center, where hundreds of thousands of exiles from Castro's Cuba were processed.

Cape Florida Lighthouse

Key Biscayne, FL

A lighthouse first built in 1825 and rebuilt after an 1836 attack during the Second Seminole War, the oldest standing structure in Miami-Dade County.

Deering Estate

Palmetto Bay, FL

Industrialist Charles Deering's estate on Biscayne Bay, with a turn-of-the-century frame inn and a 1922 stone house beside preserved hammock and mangrove.

Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks

Tarpon Springs, FL

The docks where Greek immigrant divers built a sponge industry from the early 1900s, still worked today amid Greek bakeries and churches.

Heritage Village

Largo, FL

A Pinellas County open-air museum of historic homes, a church and a schoolhouse moved together on wooded acres.

Bok Tower Gardens

Lake Wales, FL

A singing carillon tower and gardens on one of the highest points in peninsular Florida, dedicated by President Coolidge in 1929.

DeBary Hall Historic Site

DeBary, FL

An 1871 winter hunting estate built by Frederick deBary, a wine importer, on the St. Johns River.

Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Memorial Park

Mims, FL

The homesite of civil rights pioneers Harry and Harriette Moore, killed when their house was bombed on Christmas night 1951.

Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts

Barberville, FL

A living-history village of relocated turn-of-the-century buildings, with blacksmithing, pottery and a steam-era railroad depot.

Kingsley Plantation

Jacksonville, FL

The oldest standing plantation house in Florida, with the tabby ruins of the cabins of the people enslaved there.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

St. Augustine, FL

A black-and-white spiral lighthouse lit in 1874, with a maritime museum and the oldest city's harbor below.

Fort Mose Historic State Park

St. Augustine, FL

The site of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, established in 1738 as the first legally sanctioned free Black settlement in what is now the United States.

Ponce de León Hall

St. Augustine, FL

Henry Flagler's 1888 Hotel Ponce de León, now Flagler College, among the first major buildings made of poured concrete.

González-Álvarez House

St. Augustine, FL

Known as the Oldest House, a coquina home from the early 1700s that has stood through Spanish, British and American rule.

Edison and Ford Winter Estates

Fort Myers, FL

The side-by-side winter homes of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, with Edison's botanical research lab.

Koreshan State Park

Estero, FL

The settlement of the Koreshan Unity, an 1890s utopian community that believed the Earth was a hollow sphere.

Sanibel Lighthouse

Sanibel, FL

An iron-skeleton lighthouse first lit in 1884 at the eastern tip of Sanibel Island.

Mound Key Archaeological State Park

Estero, FL

An island of shell mounds that was the capital of the Calusa, the powerful people who ruled South Florida when the Spanish arrived.

Randell Research Center

Bokeelia, FL

The Calusa Heritage Trail through shell mounds and canals at Pineland, a Calusa town for more than a thousand years.

Burroughs Home & Gardens

Fort Myers, FL

A 1901 Georgian Revival home on the Caloosahatchee River, from the years Fort Myers was a cattle and river town.

Historic Spanish Point

Osprey, FL

A bayfront site with prehistoric shell middens, a pioneer homestead and the gardens of Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park

Hawthorne, FL

The Cross Creek farmhouse where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote The Yearling, which won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize.

Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse

Ponce Inlet, FL

Florida's tallest lighthouse, first lit in 1887, with keepers' houses kept as a museum.

House of Refuge at Gilbert's Bar

Stuart, FL

An 1876 lifesaving station built to shelter shipwrecked sailors, the last of its kind on Florida's coast.

Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse

Jupiter, FL

A red brick lighthouse first lit in 1860, with a museum of five thousand years of local history.

Pensacola Lighthouse

Pensacola, FL

A lighthouse first lit in 1859 on the bluff over Pensacola Bay, with a keeper's quarters museum.

Historic Pensacola Village

Pensacola, FL

Historic houses and museums in the oldest part of Pensacola, site of a 1559 Spanish settlement attempt.

Mission San Luis

Tallahassee, FL

A reconstructed 1656 Spanish mission and Apalachee town, the western capital of Spanish Florida.

Knott House Museum

Tallahassee, FL

An 1843 house where the Emancipation Proclamation was read in Tallahassee on May 20, 1865.

Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park

Tallahassee, FL

Earthen temple mounds of a Mississippian town that was a regional center from about 1050 to 1500.

Florida Southern College Frank Lloyd Wright Campus

Lakeland, FL

The largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the world, built from 1938 to 1958.

Zora Neale Hurston Grave

Fort Pierce, FL

The grave of author Zora Neale Hurston in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, unmarked until Alice Walker placed a stone in 1973.

Lakeside Inn

Mount Dora, FL

Opened in 1883 on Lake Dora, the oldest continuously operating hotel in Florida, where President Calvin Coolidge stayed in 1930.

Coral Castle

Homestead, FL

A stone garden carved and moved single-handedly by Edward Leedskalnin from coral rock between 1923 and 1951.

Venetian Pool

Coral Gables, FL

A public swimming pool carved in 1924 from a coral rock quarry, with grottoes, waterfalls and Venetian-style towers.

Weeki Wachee Springs State Park

Weeki Wachee, FL

A spring where live "mermaid" shows have played in an underwater theater since 1947, a state park since 2008.

Sunken Gardens

St. Petersburg, FL

A garden begun in 1903 in a drained sinkhole, opened to visitors in the 1930s and one of Florida's oldest roadside attractions.

Monument of States

Kissimmee, FL

A stepped pyramid dedicated in 1943, built from more than 1,500 stones sent from every state, including one from FDR's Hyde Park estate, as a symbol of unity after Pearl Harbor.

The Hall of Presidents

Lake Buena Vista, FL

A theater on Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom where every president appears together on stage, opened with the park in 1971.

Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park

St. Augustine, FL

A park on the site where Pedro Menéndez landed and founded St. Augustine in 1565, known for its legend of Ponce de León.

Silver Springs State Park

Silver Springs, FL

One of the largest artesian springs in the world, where glass-bottom boats have carried visitors since the 1870s.

Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing

Ocala, FL

Drag-racing legend "Big Daddy" Don Garlits's museum of dragsters and classic American cars.

Daytona International Speedway

Daytona Beach, FL

The track opened in 1959 that hosts the Daytona 500, near the beaches where racing began in the early 1900s.

Florida Citrus Tower

Clermont, FL

A 226-foot tower opened in 1956 so visitors could look out over the citrus groves of Central Florida.

Spook Hill

Lake Wales, FL

A gravity hill where cars seem to roll uphill, an optical illusion marked as an attraction since 1950 and listed on the National Register.

SS American Victory

Tampa, FL

A World War II cargo ship that later served in Korea and Vietnam, now a museum ship.

Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

Fort Lauderdale, FL

The 1942 Link Trainer building of the air station where a 19-year-old George H. W. Bush trained, and from which Flight 19, five Navy torpedo bombers, vanished on December 5, 1945.

Miami Military Museum

Miami, FL

A museum on the grounds of the former Naval Air Station Richmond, a World War II blimp base whose giant hangars burned in a 1945 hurricane.

Fort Foster Historic Site

Thonotosassa, FL

A reconstruction of an 1836 Second Seminole War fort guarding a bridge on the Hillsborough River, inside Hillsborough River State Park.

Fort Christmas Historical Park

Christmas, FL

A replica of the fort built on Christmas Day 1837 during the Second Seminole War, with pioneer homes on the grounds.

Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum

Titusville, FL

A warbird museum at Space Coast Regional Airport that restores and flies military aircraft from World War II forward.

Fort Matanzas National Monument

St. Augustine, FL

A small coquina fort completed in 1742 to guard the southern approach to St. Augustine, reached by a free ferry.

Fort Clinch State Park

Fernandina Beach, FL

A brick fort begun in 1847 at the mouth of the St. Marys River, occupied by both sides during the Civil War.

Military Heritage Museum

Punta Gorda, FL

A museum on the Punta Gorda waterfront honoring American service members with artifacts from the Revolution to today.

Fort King National Historic Landmark

Ocala, FL

A reconstructed 1827 Army fort that was a center of the Second Seminole War and the first seat of Marion County.

National Navy SEAL Museum

Fort Pierce, FL

The museum on the beach where Navy frogmen trained in World War II, the birthplace of the Navy SEALs.

National Naval Aviation Museum

Pensacola, FL

One of the largest aviation museums in the world, aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola, the "Cradle of Naval Aviation." Visitors need base access.

Fort Pickens

Pensacola Beach, FL

A brick fort completed in 1834 that stayed in Union hands through the Civil War, and where Geronimo was held in 1886–87.

Fort Barrancas

Pensacola, FL

An 1844 American fort built on the site of earlier Spanish and British forts guarding Pensacola Bay.

San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park

St. Marks, FL

The site of a Spanish fort begun in 1679, later held by the British, Americans and Confederates.

Air Force Armament Museum

Eglin AFB, FL

A free museum outside Eglin Air Force Base with aircraft from World War II on, including an SR-71 Blackbird.

Bay Pines National Cemetery

Bay Pines, FL

A national cemetery beside the Bay Pines VA medical center on Boca Ciega Bay, near St. Petersburg.

Florida National Cemetery

Bushnell, FL

One of the busiest national cemeteries in the country, set in the Withlacoochee State Forest.

Jacksonville National Cemetery

Jacksonville, FL

A national cemetery on the city's north side, serving veterans across Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia.

St. Augustine National Cemetery

St. Augustine, FL

A small national cemetery with the Dade Pyramids, raised over soldiers killed in the Second Seminole War.

Barrancas National Cemetery

Pensacola, FL

A national cemetery aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola, established in 1868 on ground used for military burials since the 1830s.

Dade Battlefield Historic State Park

Bushnell, FL

The site of the December 28, 1835 attack on Major Francis Dade's column, which began the Second Seminole War.

Natural Bridge Battlefield Historic State Park

Woodville, FL

The site of the March 6, 1865 battle that kept Tallahassee the only Confederate state capital east of the Mississippi not captured.