There is an island sitting in the Intracoastal about 15 minutes north of Boca that you physically cannot drive to. No bridge, no causeway, no parking lot on the far side. The only way across is a county boat that leaves from a dock in Deerfield Beach, and it costs nothing. The ride takes about five minutes. And in 1930, Al Capone's lawyer bought the place.

This is Deerfield Island Park, 53 acres of mangrove, boardwalk and butterfly garden that most people in Boca have never set foot on. The free shuttle runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays out of Sullivan Park at 1633 Riverview Road, on the hour from 10 a.m. through 3 p.m. This weekend is a shuttle weekend.

What You Are Getting Into

Access is the whole story. Because there is no road, the crowd on any given day is exactly the number of people who decided to show up for a departure. Nobody wanders in by accident. You park at Sullivan Park, walk to the floating dock, get on a small county boat, and a few minutes later you are standing on an island in the middle of the Intracoastal Waterway looking back at the mainland.

Once you are off the boat there is a 2,000 foot boardwalk that winds through the mangroves, a half mile coquina trail, a three quarter mile mangrove trail, and an observation platform that looks straight out over the water. The butterfly garden near the welcome kiosk is tended by a volunteer group called the Friends of Deerfield Island Park, who still come out and weed it by hand every week. Picnic tables, shelters and barbecue grills are already out there, which is the detail that turns this from a walk into an actual afternoon. Bring a cooler and you have a day. Bring nothing and you have a nice two hours. Either version costs the same, which is nothing.

The wildlife is the reason to walk slowly instead of powering through. Raccoons, squirrels, armadillos and a mix of migratory and indigenous birds all live out there, and the island is a designated gopher tortoise refuge holding one of the last tortoise populations left in Broward County. The upland areas where the tortoises actually burrow are closed to visitors to protect them, so treat a sighting as a bonus and not a promise. Iguanas, on the other hand, you will almost certainly see. The boardwalk is where to look for everything. Bring whoever in your house still gets excited about spotting an animal in the wild.

The Insider Move

Take the 10 a.m. boat. It is the first departure of the day, the heat has not fully settled in yet, and most importantly it puts you well ahead of the late August thunderstorms that roll through most afternoons down here. The shuttle runs weather permitting and it stops when the water gets rough, so an afternoon plan in August is a coin flip. Call 954-357-5100 that morning before you drive over. The number rings Quiet Waters Park rather than the island, but they will tell you whether the boat is going out.

Ask the captain what time the last boat back leaves, and ask before you step off onto the island. Departures run on the hour through 3 p.m., but the final return crossing is listed differently depending on where you look, and people have genuinely been stranded out there. It takes ten seconds to ask and it is the only part of this trip that can actually go wrong.

Parking is free and nobody seems to know it. The lot next to Sullivan Park looks metered, but you just enter your license plate at the kiosk, pay nothing, and get four hours. Leave the dog at home, because pets are not allowed on the island. And if you are bringing someone in a wheelchair, check the tide chart first. The island is only wheelchair accessible at high tide.

What People Are Saying

The thing visitors mention first is how short the crossing is. Reviewers describe it as a quick pontoon ride, roughly five minutes, followed by an easy flat walk on boardwalk and paved path. One TripAdvisor visitor summed the whole trip up as "a great place to take a stroll in nature" and mentioned spotting a turtle right beside the pathway along with birds and iguanas. The other recurring note is quiet. People who have been say the limited access means you are unlikely to run into a crowd, which is not something you can say about many free outdoor spots in South Florida on a Saturday.

This one landed on our radar through a reel from @peakacity, who took the shuttle over and documented the trip on his page.

Why You Have Never Heard of It

The island was closed for about two years and only reopened in June 2025 after roughly a million dollars of work, including invasive plant removal, a rebuilt boardwalk, the new butterfly garden and 2,500 feet of ADA compliant pathway. As for the name, locals have called it Capone Island for nearly a century. Capone's attorney Vincent Giblin took title to the land in 1930, reportedly for a private retreat, but Capone was arrested for tax evasion in 1932 and nothing was ever built. The taxes went unpaid, the property was forfeited, and it eventually became a county park.

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