• Introduction
• Cabbage Key
• Captiva Island
• Sanibel Island
• North Captiva Island
• Island Hopping in Your Own Boat
• Getting There
• When to Go

Cabbage Key

A high point of any trip to the islands is a visit to Cabbage Key, a 100-acre island off the northwest coast of Pine Island accessible only by boat or seaplane and where, in the 1930s, the family of the mystery novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart built a concrete and coquina-shell homestead atop a Calusa Indian shell mound. In 1944, the Stults family turned the place into a lodge, and people started tacking dollar bills onto the walls and ceiling of the bar, which has since taken on all kinds of pop-cultural baggage: Cabbage Key has been cited both as an old Hemingway fishing hangout and as the location of the original cheeseburger in paradise, immortalized in song by Jimmy Buffet. (Similar claims about both men have been made at bars and lodges across the state and throughout the Caribbean, of course. Tall tales are a hallmark of old Florida as well!)

Regardless, it is indeed a kind of paradise to take a water taxi to Cabbage Key from Pine Island or Captiva for lunch or dinner, to sit under palm and royal poinciana trees, drinking beer and eating that meal as a barge steams past in the channel or a charter captain expertly maneuvers a 50-foot yacht into a 52-foot boat slip, and then to nap, or kayak, or fish, with no more thought of what might come next than the humble manatee rubbing hard against the rough pilings on the dock.

Where to Eat
Looking for that cheeseburger in paradise? Find it in the bar on Cabbage Key (Mile Marker 60; 239/283-2278).

See Sanibel and Captiva Islands Travel Guide