Smathers Beach

Nice beach for paddle boarding. Rentals are $ 25/​hour and you can see and swim with nurse sharks, rays, turtles, fish. I was hoping for more variety of fish while snorkeling. Lots of seaweed and it is shallow with sea urchins in many places so be careful where you jump off your paddle board.

This is one of my favorite beaches.
I happen to stay a less than 5 minute walk away from this beach, which gives this beach major perks. I don’t have to get in a car or ride a bicycle to put my toes in the water. I also like that there is a Sunset Watersports kiosk to rent paddle boards and catamarans as desired. They also rent beach chairs and umbrellas.
I don’t often lounge at the beach on a beach towel or chair. I love to be in the water. If I need a bit of time out of the water I spread out a towel and read a book. The water here is shallow for a decent distance so you can walk quite a decent length out before actually needing to swim. There is a small jetty you can walk along but the rocks are quite jagged so it is definitely not for the barefooted!
There’s a few volleyball courts. A few years ago I took a kiteboarding lesson here — which leads me to my only warning. The wind can pick up and make for quite a sandblast facial here. The wind does make it nice on a warm day however. The palm trees scattered all along the permitter make it easy to find ample shade to relax in.
Parking is easy if you arrive early as you can park along the street as well as across the street in small parking areas.
Bring your suit and settle in for a day at the beach.

The Keys in Florida open doors to a waterfall of Prozac.
Smathers beach deserves at least 4 stars. Named after a Florida senator, it’s the largest public beach in Key West. The atmosphere was just incredible!, 80 degrees, warm clear ocean water, white sand, extremely beautiful palm trees, clean fresh ocean air (strait of Florida), a laid back wedding, perfect mellow music by a Trinidad steel-​pan drummer and my good friends.
Ocean beaches are unpredictable. One day they’re clean, next day they vomit ugly sea weeds and whatever ocean remains. So it’s you and your luck. I had a bad luck once in Carmel, California where the beach was smelly and full of seaweed junk.
You can’t watch the sunset from this place. Fort Zachary is the one for that. At the same time, you can’t enjoy the white sand, palm trees view and walking in the water at Fort Zachary. So plan your time to visit more than a beach in the Keys. These photos don’t do any justice.

Beautiful beach. We spent two straight days here enjoying the beautiful scenery. They have water sports if you’re into that stuff. You can rent a paddleboard or various other water activities. We went to get some sun and relax. The beach is simply lovely. The stuff you see in pictures. The parking is free too. That almost never happens at a beach. Get there early so you can secure a good parking spot and a coveted seat under one of their beautiful palm trees. The water does have seaweed but that didn’t bother us. I didn’t go to the bathroom that everyone complained about in their reviews because it sounded pretty horrific!

Key West is not known for their beaches. In fact, most hotels are not situated on the water. A few have their own private beach. On the way to Duval from outside KW you travel along Smathers Beach.
It’s nothing spectacular. They rent out chairs, windsurfers, paddle boards, umbrellas… etc. The sand isn’t the greatest. A lot much nicer beaches in FLA. Key West is more for drinking and eating… and somewhat relaxing (at a private beach if you can).
Street parking.

This was a great day on the beach. We took a cab from the Port and it was about a ten minute drive. We asked to be dropped off in front of the Sheraton and immediately rented two chairs for $ 10 each. Anytime we needed a drink or to use the restroom, we walked across the street to the Tiki Bar outside at the Sheraton. We ate lunch at the Sheraton also, but there were plenty of food trucks next to the beach to choose from as well. I’m not familiar with other beaches in Key West, but this was not crowded and very peaceful to spend the day laying on the beach.

As far as beaches in Key West go, this one is pretty good.
At the time of my visit, it looked absolutely perfect — sugar white sand, palm trees, turquoise water. Plenty of street parking nearby, and paddleboard/​Hobie Cat rentals onsite. There were a couple of food trucks parked nearby as well, if you get hungry.
The only downsides I noticed were the bathrooms (only one, and it can be kind of a far walk, depending where you are on the beach — plus, the stalls have no doors, and thus zero privacy) and the nearby airport. The sound of jets taking off is overwhelmingly loud at times!
Other than that, a really nice, mellow beach. I preferred it to Zach Taylor; better sand and much more room to lay out.
I would definitely come back here again!

We had a couple hours of sun left and we were looking for a beach to set up camp at until the sunset. Smathers Beach popped up on our radar, so we made a beeline for it before the sun could get any lower in the sky.
Free parking — always a plus. We haven’t had too much trouble with parking in Key West, which is always a bother in touristy areas.
There are a lot of tree roots around the palm trees that I kept tripping over and catching my foot under — it hurt a lot… Especially when the roots were slightly hidden under the sand. I wonder if there’s a way to do maintenance on that.
The beach has a beautiful view of the sunset. So be sure to come for the sunset, especially if you missed the sunrise like us.
They rent out beach chairs for $ 10 a piece — we rented one so we could put our stuff on a chair instead of in the sand. It was so windy that day so sand was blowing everywhere.
There are food trucks set up along the street where we parked. Most of them seemed overpriced, but I’m not surprised, with it being so close to the beach and a whole bunch of tourists.
Overall, a beautiful beach — and you’re not paying the cost for parking or park entry like other beach options in Key West.

It’s a decent beach during the day, but do NOT go at night. It is full of no-​see-​ums, biting flies! They will really start to bug you — no pun intended.

There was rotting seaweed everywhere so the entire beach smelled like rotting eggs. We decided to go snorkeling but we were so disappointed because there was nothing to see at all. Go to Higgs beach or Bahia Honda instead

Great day at the beach. The sand is very clean, there was some sea weed at the waters edge and some out in the water but pretty good.
Several people para-​surfing and that’s always very cool to watch.

Relatively large beach along the south shore of Key West. It’s also good for catching the sunrise, and typically there aren’t many people in the early morning except for joggers and walkers on the sidewalk. In the middle of the day, it’s very hot and muggy.

We were staying in the Sheraton Suites right across the street so Smathers beach was a convenient walk for us from our hotel.
This beach for us at the time was very quiet and peaceful and not what I’m used to seeing in Miami because of it simply being more tranquil. The waves here weren’t as strong either and overall it was a much more private experience.
While it’s not quite as nice as Bahia Honda it’s definitely not a bad beach as some of the reviews here may say. I’ve been to much worse than this like the so called beach at the Waldorf which is muddy, rocky and just ugly.

As far as beaches go this is a great place to spend your day. The sand is fine and soft under your feet. The water is almost always warm and pretty transparent. There are beach chairs for rent but I like to crash on a towel under a palm tree. I lather up my 110spf sunscreen, put my sun shirt over my bathing suit, and take my casper white skin into the water for a dip. We were down after a cold spell and there were dead jellyfish all over the water. I avoided those like the plague. The water was a bit cooler than normal due to that cold spell but it was still warmer than most places I’ve swam.
The bathroom is where you loose the two stars. There is no privacy what so ever! The stalls are merely curved walls with no doors so anyone can see your everything, just a heads up. There was no hand soap, no toilet paper, and no paper towels. Yuck! Come for the beach, play in the water, build a sand castle but leave to go elsewhere to use the bathroom.

The sand was nice and fine and came off pretty easily. Loved the palm trees lining the back of the beach and the strategically placed picnic tables in the shade. We went on a Monday and it was us and maybe 8 other people — nice!
Made a trek to the bathroom which is a cool building made of hunks of coral. It was hideous — no doors on the stalls, dirty toilets and no soap. Hover, ladies, hover…

Holy mac n cheese. This place is a slice of heaven. We loved the clean white sand. The pictures says it all.

Landlocked out-​of-​towners, you have to understand, Florida has over a thousand miles of coastline — so while the pictures make this look like a perfectly decent beach, in reality any other beach found on peninsular Florida beats it.
Driving along S Roosevelt Boulevard, it looks like it would be a cool beach, even somewhat picturesque with plentiful palm trees lining the narrow strip of sand, and a few vendors out on the sidewalk hawking the typical beachfront provisions. Indeed, if you’re from Minneapolis and just looking for a place to bake out in the tropical sun, Smathers will suit you just fine. And, you’d better apply your sunscreen quite liberally, because this ain’t Duluth/​Lake Superior in July. Don’t spend your Keys vacation with a painful first-​degree burn.
What truly sucks about this beach is the actual bathing experience. You see, this isn’t naturally meant to be beach. Take a look at a map of the waters surrounding Key West on the Atlantic side where this beach is located — most of the water right near the beach doesn’t get any deeper than 2 – 3 feet, and takes a fair distance to even drop to 6 feet, then takes another long distance to drop to 10 feet. It’s a gradually sloping shallow flat, all the way out until you hit the Gulf Stream.
Beyond that, the bottom is not soft luxurious sand or finely ground coquina like every other Florida beach. It’s rocky with patches of foul, squishy seaweed. Owing to the above topography, there’s no surf, and barely any perceptible current, so the water has a stagnant, dirty feel to it. Since it’s so shallow and the sun so strong, the water also tends to be very warm… so bathing here is kind of like sitting in a shallow bowl of hot… well, you go ahead and use your imagination.
Siesta Key Beach or St. Augustine Beach, this is not.

The second best beach in Key West. Second only to the one at Fort Zachary Taylor. Don’t miss this beach. It’s very family friendly and there are resorts and condos nearby with little parking.

Maybe it depends on what time of the year your there.
The beach drops off quickly into water. It has a layer of crap (weeds/​etc) floating and covering the beach. It just wasn’t that swim-​able.
It was a great beach to walk on, but not sand castles (due to the mess with the water).
So that was in December, maybe other times of year are better?

How does Smather’s have the lowest rating of all the Key West beaches?
You midwesterners obviously don’t know a good beach when you see it.
This beach is perfect… everything a solid beach should be: clean, relatively quiet, free and plentiful parking, white sand, perfectly clear water and absolutely gorgeous, unobstructed views.
When I return to Key West I wouldn’t even bother going to any other beach BUT Smather’s. Skip Fort Zachary, skip Higgs and just come straight here. You will be glad you listened to me.
I know my beaches ok?