One Perfect Day in Cedar Key, Florida: Hour by Hour

Morning in Cedar Key: Breakfast on 2nd Street

Start on 2nd Street. That is where the island keeps its mornings. Annie's Cafe sits at 6th and FL-24. 1842 Daily Grind & Mercantile and Cedar Key Island Bakery are both on 2nd itself — one block, your own opening. The Prickly Palm, also on 2nd, is the third stop on that same short stretch. Any of the four will do. The point is to be awake before the heat and to eat before the day's first decision: what to do with the water.

The water is the reason any of this exists. Permanent occupation of these islands began in 1839, when the US Army under Zachary Taylor built Fort No. 4 on Depot Key as a depot and hospital and made it the headquarters of the Army of the South. The Army abandoned the base in 1842, the same year Congress passed the Florida Armed Occupation Act, which opened the Cedar Keys to settlement. That same year, on 4 October, a hurricane drove a 27-foot storm surge across the keys, destroying Cantonment Morgan and wrecking much of Depot Key. Keep that date in mind as you walk around today. It is not the last time weather decided what this town would be.

After breakfast, drive out Co Rd 326 to the Shell Mound Observation Deck. It is the quietest way to understand what the islands were before sawmills: a place people have been gathering food from for a very long time. Go early. There is no shade worth counting on.

Late Morning: Cedar Key History and the Arts Center

Come back into town and give the history its due. Cedar Key's history is out of all proportion to its present size. The town has 756 people. It once had seventeen sawmills turning out nearly half a million board feet a week.

The cedar gave the whole group of keys its name. Atsena Otie means cedar island in the Creek language. Augustus Steele bought the military structures on Atsena Otie Key in 1843 for $227 along with title to its 167 acres. That island became the nucleus of the first organised settlement in the Cedar Keys. Steele renamed it Atsena Otie Key and built summer cottages there for Florida and Georgia planters. The Cedar Key post office was established in 1845 with Steele as its first postmaster.

Cedar milling was the making of the town. The Eberhard Faber mill, set up in 1865, cut red cedar slats for pencils, and by 1886 the 17 sawmills at Cedar Key were turning out nearly half a million board feet a week. Both the Eberhard Faber mill and the Eagle Pencil Company cut pencil slats here until the 1896 hurricane and fire damaged both so badly that they closed soon after. The Eagle Pencil Company site on Way Key, at 3rd and G Streets, is where cedar slats and pencil boxes were made. This town supplied the wood the world wrote with. Then one storm ended it.

If you would rather stay on the main island, the Cedar Key Arts Center on 2nd Street is the indoor counterweight to all that weather. Bonish Studio, also on 2nd, is another stop on the same block.

Afternoon in Cedar Key: Lunch and the Waterfront

Lunch splits roughly two ways. Steamers and 2nd Street Cafe share the address 434 2nd St, which makes the decision unusually easy to reverse. 83 West & 29 North at 83 West is on Dock St, Island Room Restaurant and Sand Bar is on 2nd, and Cedar Key Pizza And Subs is at 598 2nd St. Jaybird's Chicken And Dock Street Dips is on Dock St if you have drifted back toward the water. Tipsy Cow Bar & Grill sits on Dock St as well.

The afternoon is for the water and for leaving the car where it is. Everything in the list above is within a few blocks of everything else. That is the whole geography of the town, and it is worth noticing: the historic core is small enough to cross on foot in minutes, which is exactly why the 1896 storm could take so much of it at once.

If you want an afternoon event rather than an afternoon nap, the Cedar Key Pirate Invasion runs on A St and is the town's least solemn use of its own maritime history.

Evening in Cedar Key: Dinner and Drinks

Dinner is the day's real fork in the road. Steamers carries the largest review footprint in town, 4.5 from 4,362 reviews, and sits at 434 2nd St. 83 West & 29 North at 83 West holds a 4.3 from 1,175 reviews on Dock St. 2nd Street Cafe is at 4.6 from 901 reviews. Low Key Hideaway, out at 12050 FL-24, is the highest-rated stop on this list at 4.8 from 890 reviews, and it is a bar rather than a restaurant, which makes it either the end of the night or the beginning of a longer one.

If You Have a Second Day, or Come in October

The Cedar Key Seafood Festival runs each October under the Lions Club: more than 100 arts and crafts exhibits, live music, a Saturday parade at 11am, and clam chowder, oysters and smoked mullet dip. It is also the rare chance to reach Seahorse Key, a historic island three miles out that is otherwise closed to the public. That alone justifies building a trip around the date.

If you are extending the stay, the comparisons are honest ones. Steinhatchee, 44 miles away, holds the Fiddler Crab Festival. Perry, 76 miles, holds the Florida Forest Festival. New Port Richey, 66 miles, holds the Chasco Fiesta. Dade City, 80 miles, holds the Kumquat Festival. Mount Dora, 100 miles, holds both the Mount Dora Arts Festival and the Mount Dora Craft Fair.

The town is smaller than its history. It always has been. Seventeen sawmills became a handful of streets, and the wood the world wrote with became a story told on a waterfront that floods. Come for a day, walk it end to end, and you will have covered most of it. The rest is weather.