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National Park Service · Dry Tortugas National Park · FL

Garden Key Campground

5Heads uppark alerts, one naming this campground
Park Closure
Current Alerts and Conditions Be sure to review the Alerts and Conditions below before and during your visit for additional, up-to-date information on closures, cautions, and other current park conditions.
Park Closure
Sections of moat wall closed until Winter 2026 Sections of the moat wall that were damaged by Hurricanes Helene and Milton (2024) are undergoing repair and reinforcement. For your safety, please follow posted signage and do not cross any barricades.
Park Closure
Seasonal Closure: Bush Key Most of Bush Key is now open to the public. To protect nesting frigatebirds, a small area on the north side of Bush Key, all of Long Key, and all vegetation remains closed until further notice.
Caution
Garden Key Harbor Light Vessel operators - the Garden Key Harbor Light is undergoing repairs and is extinguished. At this time it is unknown when the light will again be illuminated.
Information
Migrant Notice Like elsewhere in the Florida Keys, we have seen an increase in Cuban migrants arriving by boat from Cuba and landing on the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park. You may observe migrant landings at the park and visitor areas may be…
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 8 sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Garden Key Harbor LightCaution naming this campground · open
Sites
88 of them walk-up
Season
Year-roundOpen year-round
Photos · NPS Photo / Maria Belen Farias
138 ftWater · Ocean · to the Atlantic Ocean
66.5 miW of Key West, FL
8Walk-up sites
0%Tree cover
Bortle 1Night sky · darkest of 60 in FL
Open year-roundToday

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Garden Key, home to Fort Jefferson, has a primitive campground only a short walk from public dock and piers. Individual sites can accommodate up to three 2-person tents (6 persons max per-site) on a first-come, first served basis. In the event a regular campsite is unavailable, an overflow area will be made available. Upon arrival all overnight visitors will be provided a place to camp. For parties of 10 or more, a group campsite is available through our website.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Composting Toilets - year round
Drinking water
None, bring your own
Source: National Park Service and agency records
Official page: Garden Key Campground Official Website →

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

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Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate24.62701, -82.87341
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight79°Showers And Thunderstorms Likely60% rain
Saturday84°Showers And Thunderstorms Likely65% rain
Saturday Night77°Showers And Thunderstorms83% rain
Sunday82°Showers And Thunderstorms83% rain

NWS forecast for Key West, FL

Source: National Weather Service, KEY forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 76°F, day 85°F.

100°60°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: DRY TORTUGAS, FL (USC00082418), 0.1 miles away and at about the same elevation
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Carlos Gimenez, official portrait

Garden Key Campground is in Florida’s 28th congressional district. Its representative, Carlos Gimenez (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

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Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: The agency lists it open right now.
The alert naming this campground: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
Season: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026
No fresh water within 50 km: no lake, reservoir, river or stream that the water pass counts lies inside its search. The coast above is the salt water, measured separately.
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.0042 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 60 rated federal campgrounds in Florida · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Cell signal: the Park Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026