Florida Places and Landmarks: The Statewide Guides

The National Park Service lists 11 park sites in Florida, from Everglades, Biscayne and Dry Tortugas national parks to Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine and Gulf Islands National Seashore at Gulf Breeze (National Park Service, Florida).

The full Florida list on the Park Service's state page also includes Big Cypress National Preserve, which conserves over 729,000 acres of swamp, Canaveral National Seashore, De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton, Fort Caroline National Memorial, Fort Matanzas National Monument and the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Jacksonville (NPS Florida). Dry Tortugas National Park lies almost 70 miles west of Key West, covers 100 square miles that are mostly open water with seven small islands, and is reachable only by boat or seaplane.

One caution on the numbers. The same Florida page reports 13,713,058 visitors to the Florida parks and \$1,373,000,000 of economic benefit from park tourism, but its footnote says the figures are for the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2020, so they are dated (NPS Florida, By the Numbers). The Florida national parks guide covers the major Florida park units, their history and their economic role.

Florida has three national forests, the Apalachicola, the Osceola and the Ocala, which together span almost 1.2 million acres in north and central Florida (USDA Forest Service, National Forests in Florida).

The Forest Service says that acreage includes about 500,000 acres of wetlands and more than 85,000 acres of designated federal wilderness, and that more than 1,400 miles of trails and 118 developed recreation sites draw more than 1.1 million visitors a year (Forest Service). The Florida national forests guide covers each of the three forests, their wilderness areas and recreation.

The Florida Park Service manages 175 state parks, trails and historic sites spanning more than 815,000 acres and 101 miles of beach (Florida DEP Division of Recreation and Parks).

DEP describes the Florida Park Service as the first four-time winner of the national Gold Medal for the best state park system, with springs, rivers, trails, battle reenactments, museums and lighthouses among its draws; the Division of Recreation and Parks is at 3900 Commonwealth Blvd. in Tallahassee, 850-245-3029 (Florida DEP). In coastal and fresh waters, DEP also manages 43 aquatic preserves covering over 2.9 million acres of submerged lands; the aquatic preserves protect seagrass meadows, oyster and hard-bottom habitats, mangrove forests, salt marshes and coral reefs across Florida waters (DEP aquatic preserves).

The Florida state preserve system guide explains how state parks, aquatic preserves and conservation land purchases fit together, and the Fellsmere Grade and conservation corridors guide follows one example on the ground, the conservation lands reached from Fellsmere Grade west of Fellsmere.

Florida's best-known historic forts are federal: Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine preserves the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States, and Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park is one of the largest forts ever built (NPS Florida, NPS Fort Jefferson).

Fort Matanzas National Monument, south of St. Augustine, preserves a coquina watchtower completed in 1742 that guarded the southern approach to the Spanish settlement (NPS Florida). Fort Jefferson took nearly 30 years to build, from 1846 to 1875, and was never finished nor fully armed; the Park Service describes it as a link in the Third System of coastal forts that stretched from Maine to California (NPS). Florida's state parks also count lighthouses, museums and battle reenactments among their draws, according to DEP (Florida DEP).

The Florida historic forts guide covers forts across the state from the Spanish period to the Civil War, and the Florida lighthouses guide covers the light stations, the Florida Reef lights and their preservation.

Florida's Department of State runs twelve Underwater Archaeological Preserves, a system of underwater parks begun in 1987 around shipwrecks and other historic sites that are open to the public year round, free of charge (Florida Division of Historical Resources).

Each site is interpreted by an underwater plaque, and a brochure and laminated underwater guides are available from local dive shops (Underwater Preserves). The rules matter as much as the sites. State-owned underwater resources include the bottoms of navigable rivers, lakes and bays and offshore waters out to 9 miles in the Gulf and 3 miles in the Atlantic, and disturbing or digging a publicly owned site is illegal without state permission (Underwater archaeology laws). The Division asks divers to record and report finds instead (Underwater archaeology laws), and it invites nominations for new preserves throughout the state (Underwater Preserves).

The Florida shipwrecks and archaeological sites guide covers which wrecks the public can visit and whether it is legal to take artifacts from a Florida shipwreck.

Florida records historic places in the Florida Master Site File, the state's official inventory of more than 261,000 cultural resources, and also lists them on the National Register and marks them through the Historical Marker Program (Florida Master Site File, Historical Markers).

The Master Site File records archaeological sites, historic structures, cemeteries, bridges and districts, holds copies of over 29,000 manuscripts, and answers search requests at 850-245-6440 (Master Site File). Florida National Register nominations go to the National Park Service through the Division of Historical Resources after review by the Florida National Register Review Board, and listing by itself puts no obligation on the owner (DHR National Register). The marker program is run by the Florida Historical Marker Council, which meets through the year to review applications; the program contact is 850-245-6371 (DHR markers).

The counts do not line up, and that is worth knowing. The Division of Historical Resources says more than 1,700 Florida properties and districts are on the National Register, while the National Park Service's Florida page shows 1,893 listings and 46 National Historic Landmarks, figures dated to fiscal year 2020 (DHR, NPS Florida). Cemeteries got their own program in 2023: House Bill 49, chapter 2023-142, Laws of Florida, created a Historic Cemeteries Program that records cemeteries at least 50 years old in the Master Site File and searches for abandoned cemeteries, with an emphasis on abandoned African-American cemeteries (Historic Cemeteries Program). The Florida historic cemeteries guide covers that work.

The Florida places and landmarks section has eight statewide guides, and the table maps each common question to the key fact above and the guide that goes deeper.

For a single Florida building, site or wreck, the Master Site File is the place to ask first, since it is the inventory every other state register draws on (Florida Master Site File). Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the Florida Department of State, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, National Park Service and USDA Forest Service websites.