Things to Do in Fort Lauderdale: Three State Parks, 14 Cabins and $2.00 Bus Fares

FORT LAUDERDALE · FLORIDA · THINGS TO DO

Three state parks sit inside the Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, and Florida counts them down to the foot: 4,531 feet of boardwalk at one of them, 60 feet at another, 2.2 miles of beach here against a tenth of a mile there. Those counts come from the state’s own 2024 recreational facilities inventory, and they sort a weekend faster than any description of the sand does.

A Broward County Transit ride costs $2.00 one way, and an All Day Pass bought on the bus is $5.00. The other force in town is the water traffic: Port Everglades handled more than 4.7 million cruise passengers in FY2025 as a homeport, so ships begin and end their week here, and the beach hotels and the airport fill on the same two days.

On this page

• Three state parks inside the cityParking, beaches and boardwalks, counted
• Which park beach to walk onto2.2 miles, 0.3 and 0.1
• Cabins in a state parkOleta River’s 14 cabins
• Parks beyond the three state unitsMore than 50 Broward County parks
• Bus fares in Fort Lauderdale$2.00 a ride, $5.00 all day
• Cruise port and airport crowdsPort Everglades, 4.7 million passengers
• Weather month by monthThe Fort Lauderdale calendar

One caveat before the numbers start. January averages a high of 75.6°F, a low of 60.9°F and 2.90 inches of rain, and July averages a high of 90.0°F and 5.41 inches. Every weather figure here comes from NOAA station USW00012849, the gauge at the airport, about three miles inland from the sand, not from the beach itself. The full month-by-month reading lives in the Fort Lauderdale calendar, with January and July broken out in detail.

State parks near Fort Lauderdale: parking, beaches and boardwalks

Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park carries the largest counts of the three. The state’s 2024 inventory lists 1,410 parking spaces, one designated swimming area, 2.2 miles of beach, 2.6 miles of hiking trail and 4,531 feet of boardwalk. Every one of those figures is a facilities count, not a description of the day you will have there.

On the strip between the ocean and the Intracoastal, Hugh Taylor Birch State Park runs small on the same page: 275 parking spaces, one designated swimming area, 0.1 miles of beach, 0.3 miles of hiking trail, 60 feet of boardwalk and one canoe, kayak and tube launch.

Oleta River State Park is the southern one, on the bay side rather than the ocean, at the edge of Miami‘s northern suburbs. Its line reads 925 parking spaces, one designated swimming area, 0.3 miles of beach, two canoe, kayak and tube launches, and 14 cabins.

Which Fort Lauderdale state park beach to choose

The state marks one designated swimming area in each of the three parks. That is three marked places to get into the water across the whole metropolitan set, recorded identically at Mizell-Johnson, Hugh Taylor Birch and Oleta River. The inventory does not grade them, rank them or describe what stands beside them.

Mizell-Johnson counts 2.2 miles of beach against 0.3 at Oleta River and 0.1 at Hugh Taylor Birch. A tenth of a mile runs a few hundred feet, so Birch’s 0.3 miles of trail and its single canoe, kayak and tube launch carry more of a visit there than its shoreline does.

On a busy Sunday the parking column decides the day before the sand does: 1,410 spaces at Mizell-Johnson, 925 at Oleta River, 275 at Hugh Taylor Birch. Birch offers roughly a fifth of the room of the biggest lot for a shoreline a twentieth as long. The inventory we read records no other parking at the three parks, and no entrance fee or gate hour for any of them.

With a stroller or a wheelchair, the boardwalk figure settles it: 4,531 feet at Mizell-Johnson, 60 feet at Hugh Taylor Birch. The Oleta River line we read lists cabins, launches and parking, with no boardwalk recorded, so ask the park before you count on a rolled surface there.

Oleta River State Park cabins: 14 cabins inside the city

Oleta River State Park holds 14 cabins, and they sit inside the metropolitan area rather than an hour out of it, on the bay side, sharing an inventory line with 925 parking spaces and two canoe, kayak and tube launches.

For a short trip that changes the morning. A two-night stop puts the paddle launches, the park’s one designated swimming area and its 0.3 miles of beach within walking distance of where you slept, instead of behind a drive that starts with a highway.

The state file records the count, not the comfort. Fourteen cabins is a number of structures, and nothing in the recreational facilities inventory says what bedding, cooking or cooling any of them contains. They are not hotel rooms, and they are not backcountry camping either: they are a park unit with a reservation attached.

No nightly rate appears here, because we could not read one. The same applies to the park’s entrance fee and its opening hours: the operator pages either refuse machine reads or render only inside a browser, and we invent no amount to fill the gap.

Ask the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s page for Oleta River for the fee, the state reservation service for the cabins themselves, and the park by telephone for the gate hour on your arrival date. Anything outside the three state units is answered by Broward County Parks and Recreation instead.

Broward County parks: more than 50 beyond the state parks

Broward County Parks and Recreation publishes more than 50 parks: regional parks, nature centers, neighborhood parks, natural areas and specialty parks, all of that on top of the three state units in the metropolitan area.

That list becomes useful on the afternoon the state lots fill. Once the 1,410 spaces at Mizell-Johnson and the 275 at Hugh Taylor Birch are taken, the county inventory is the next place to look, and its fees and hours are set by the county, so they have to be asked for separately from the state’s.

Broward County Transit fares: $2.00 a ride, $5.00 all day

A Broward County Transit ride costs $2.00 one way. The All Day Pass costs $5.00 and is bought on the bus, so any day with three boardings already favors the pass. A 7-day pass costs $20.00.

Reduced fare is $1.00, for riders 65 and over, riders under 18, and riders carrying disability documentation. The operator’s fare page lists that rate beside the $2.00 standard, which is the page we were able to read.

Route-level coverage is where our reading stopped. The fares came through, the network detail did not: those pages render only inside a browser, and no train fare for the corridor could be read at all. Ask broward.org/bct for the line that reaches your beach, and see getting around Florida for the rest of the state.

Port Everglades cruise port

Port Everglades handled more than 4.7 million cruise passengers in FY2025, and it works as a homeport rather than a port of call. The ship starts and finishes its week here, so the city absorbs a full load of arrivals and a full load of departures on the same date, over and over.

FLL boarded 17,096,131 passengers in calendar year 2024, which the FAA classes a large hub. Cruise turnarounds and flights cross on the same two days of the week, and the port describes the overlap without naming the pair, so the itinerary of your own ship is what names it for you.

For a beach hotel, that means booking the turnaround night early and reading the bill twice. Broward County levies a 6.0% transient rental tax on every night booked, collected alongside the 6% state sales tax, so 12% lands on the rate you were quoted, before any resort fee. The resort fee is set by the property itself and is not a tax. What Florida costs takes the rest of the budget.

Move the flight to the day before or the day after the ship if the fare allows it. When the date cannot move, price the day through the fare box rather than a parking lot: $2.00 one way, $5.00 for the All Day Pass bought on board, $20.00 for seven days.