Day Trips from St. Augustine: Fort Matanzas, the Lighthouse and the Beaches

ST. AUGUSTINE · DAY TRIPS · EASTERN TIME

You are already in town, so the question has narrowed: what can you reach today and still be back before the light goes? On January 15 the sun rises at 7:20 a.m. and sets at 5:48 p.m. local time, for 10 hours 29 minutes of daylight. On July 15 it runs 6:33 a.m. to 8:28 p.m., just under 14 hours. Those figures come from sunrise and sunset calculations for the middle of each month, and they decide how much fits between the drive out and the drive back.

Not much of what follows the road south costs money. Fort Matanzas National Monument is free, ferry included. The Castillo de San Marcos charges $15 for anyone aged 16 and over, and the ticket stays valid for seven consecutive days. Children 15 and under are admitted free with an adult. Your bed is the expensive part: St. Johns County adds a 5.0% transient rental tax, filed with the 6% state sales tax. The old town itself has its own guide.

On this page

• Fort Matanzas ferry and boarding passFree, and picked up at the fort
• National Park Service sites in townCastillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas
• Lighthouse hours and the climb44 inches, last ticket 5:30 p.m. in winter
• Beach flags and public sandWhat double red closes
• Jacksonville or Daytona Beach for the dayWhat each one gives
• Florida’s other federal park unitsThe statewide list of eleven

Season decides which of these is a good idea at all. January averages a high of 65.5°F and a low of 42.9°F, with 3.28 inches of rain spread over 5.2 days of at least a tenth of an inch, and 6.2 nights that reach 32°F or below. July runs 91.9°F by day, 73.2°F at night and 6.77 inches of rain. Every climate figure here comes from the 1991 to 2020 NOAA normals at station USW00013889, Jacksonville International Airport. Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10, so a September boat plan wants a fallback.

Fort Matanzas: free entry, including the ferry

All areas of Fort Matanzas National Monument are free of charge, and the Park Service counts the ferry to the fort inside that. No gate fee, no boat fare, no upsell at the other end. The river carries a blunt name for a reason: Matanzas is the Spanish word for slaughters, after the killing of the French Huguenots on this water. Whoever held Florida held the rich shipping lanes coming up from the Spanish Caribbean, and this inlet was the back door.

The boarding pass is free too, and it is issued at the Fort Matanzas Visitor Center. Not at the city visitor center up in St. Augustine. Collect it there and you have spent the drive for nothing. Everyone riding needs a pass in their own name, whatever their age, so count the toddler and the grandmother in the tally before you walk to the dock.

What the boat lands you at is a fortified coquina watchtower completed in 1742, built to defend the southern approach to the Spanish military settlement upriver. It is small, and that is the whole character of it: a gun deck, a handful of rooms, and a sightline down the inlet where a hostile sail would show first. Conflict on this river goes back to 1565, the year the Park Service gives for the founding of St. Augustine.

The timetable is the piece we could not read. The Park Service states that the Fort Ferry Service operates October 1 through September 30, but the daily departure times were not legible on the pages we checked on September 8, 2026, and we are not going to invent them. Call the monument or open the NPS Fort Matanzas page the morning you go, and ask whether the boat is running and when the last one comes back.

National parks in St. Augustine: Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas

Florida holds eleven National Park Service units. Two of them are in this one town: Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, in the middle of it, and Fort Matanzas National Monument, downriver. Neither is a National Park by designation, a label that in Florida belongs to Biscayne, Dry Tortugas and the Everglades. The Castillo is the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States, a precision the Park Service keeps because older Spanish works stand in Puerto Rico.

As a day, the pair splits neatly. The Castillo is a morning you walk to from breakfast: first admission at 9:00 a.m., last admission at 5:00 p.m., everyone out at 5:15, seven days a week except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fort Matanzas is the afternoon, south along the water, costing nothing but fuel and the wait for a boat. The seven-day Castillo ticket means you can take the fort in two short visits instead of one long one.

Both forts are the same material, and the Park Service explains it without romance on its Stories page: the Castillo is constructed from coquina, and the Spanish built with it because it was the only local stone. The 1742 watchtower downriver is coquina as well. Stand close to either wall and it resolves into packed shell fragments. The color comes from nothing else, and neither does the softness under your hand.

St. Augustine Lighthouse: opening hours and the height rule

The lighthouse keeps two schedules. From October 1 to February 28 it opens 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily, with the last ticket sold at 5:30 p.m. From March 1 to September 30 it runs 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., last ticket at 6:00 p.m. That final half hour is the climb window, and it is not generous if there is a line at the base.

Height governs the tower. Children under 44 inches are kept off it for safety, and animals are not permitted up either. Above 44 inches, a child has to make the climb under their own power. Nobody gets carried, so a family with one small child should plan for somebody to stay at the bottom.

The tower dates from 1874 and general admission includes going up. Expect an iron spiral in a narrow shaft, air that thickens toward the top, and July conditions that read 91.9°F at the airport station before you add a stairwell. Knees, hearts and a dislike of enclosed staircases are all worth consulting on the ground floor rather than at the halfway landing.

We cannot give you the entry price. The general admission rate was not legible at the source on September 8, 2026. The only figure that surfaced was a $500 per-person Lens Room Tour, and that is a special-access booking rather than the ticket at the gate.

Ask the museum directly before you drive over, and ask in the same call whether the tower is open, since weather and maintenance close a climb faster than any published schedule shows. Until you have that number, build the day’s budget off the Castillo’s published $15 and the statewide cost tiers.

Beaches near St. Augustine

The Atlantic sits a short hop east of the old town, and sea temperature is the whole argument about when to bother. Off St. Augustine the surface averages 62.6°F in January and 84.5°F in July, taken as the mean of daily maxima over 2015 to 2024 from the Open-Meteo marine record. January is a walking beach with a jacket. July is a swimming one, priced in 2.2 days of an inch or more of rain across the month.

Read the flags at the entrance before the towel comes out. Double red means the water is closed. Red is high hazard, yellow medium, green low hazard and swim with care, and purple flies alongside another flag for dangerous marine life. Florida publishes the system, but no law compels a beach to fly any of it, so bare poles tell you nothing about the surf. One rule matters at the dune line: under Florida Statutes 163.035, wet sand below the mean high-water line is public, while dry sand above it can be private without a judicial declaration of customary use. Our safety notes go further.

Jacksonville and Daytona Beach from St. Augustine

Jacksonville is the nearest large airport city. JAX boarded 3,749,791 passengers in 2024, a medium hub by FAA count, which makes it the practical place to collect a car or hand off a departing guest, with a downtown and river frontage to fill the hours around a flight. Daytona Beach offers the opposite kind of day: hard Atlantic sand, a boardwalk economy, and the Volusia County beach safety operation that publishes the same flag system you read up here.

Drive times are the gap in our file. We could not verify a mileage or a duration for either run from a source we trust, so ask a mapping app the morning you set out, or the desk where you are staying, and ask about the coast road as well as the interstate. And some things people ask about are not day trips at all from this base. The Everglades and the Keys each need their own drive at both ends, and Orlando runs on its own park calendar behind an airport that boarded 27,859,783 passengers in 2024. Sleep near what you came to do.

Sources & data for this guide

• Fort Matanzas: all areas free including the ferry, free boarding pass at the Fort Matanzas Visitor Center, pass required for all ages · National Park Service · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Coquina watchtower completed in 1742, the naming of the Matanzas River, the 1565 founding date · NPS Fort Matanzas, home and History & Culture · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Fort Ferry Service season, Oct 1 to Sep 30 · NPS Fort Matanzas · checked Sep 10, 2026 · daily departure times were not legible at the source, so none are quoted here: ask the monument
• Castillo de San Marcos fees ($15 for ages 16 and over, valid 7 consecutive days, under 16 free with an adult) and hours (first admission 9:00 a.m., last 5:00 p.m., exit 5:15 p.m., closed Thanksgiving and Christmas) · NPS · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Coquina as the only local stone, and the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States · NPS Castillo de San Marcos, Stories page · checked Sep 10, 2026 · the coquina line is not on the index, Learn or FAQ pages, which is why we opened Stories
• Lighthouse seasonal hours and last ticket, the 44-inch rule, no animals up the tower, 1874 tower included in admission · St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Lighthouse general admission price: not legible at the source on Sep 8, 2026 · only a $500 per-person Lens Room Tour rate appeared, and that is special access · ask the museum
• Beach warning flags · Florida Statutes s. 380.276 and Volusia County Beach Safety · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Customary use above the mean high-water line · Florida Statutes s. 163.035(2) · checked Sep 10, 2026
• January and July normals, rain days, freeze nights · NOAA NCEI 1991-2020, station USW00013889 (Jacksonville International Airport) · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Sea surface temperatures (mean of daily maxima, 2015-2024) · Open-Meteo Marine API · daylight and sun times for the 15th · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Passenger boardings for JAX and MCO, CY2024 · Federal Aviation Administration · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Eastern time east of the Apalachicola River · 49 CFR 71.5(f) · checked Sep 10, 2026 · St. Johns County 5.0% transient rental tax with the 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue DR-15TDT · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Our cards on the table: the widely repeated title of oldest continuously occupied city appears on none of the National Park Service pages we read, so we serve the sourced 1565 founding date instead · drive times between St. Augustine, Jacksonville and Daytona Beach are unverified in our file · hours and fees change, so confirm with each operator before you set out.