Things to do
Museums and attractions
Five small museums you can see in a morning each: the House of Refuge on the rocks, the Elliott Museum across from the beach, the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center next door, the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse at the south end of the coast and the Stuart Heritage Museum in an old feed store downtown.
All five are real places; the hours and prices on each page are the kind that change, so check before you go. Three of them sit within a mile of each other on Hutchinson Island and make an easy wet-weather day with lunch at Stuart Beach between them.
Children get in free or cheaply at all of them, and the Coastal Center’s stingray feeding and sea turtle rounds are the thing most families remember.
A lighthouse, a lifesaving station, a car collection and a sea turtle hospital
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Museum
House of Refuge
The last of the ten houses built in 1876 to shelter shipwrecked sailors, on the rocks at Gilbert’s Bar with the surf…
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Museum
Elliott Museum
Cars, boats, baseball and the history of the island in a modern building across the road from Stuart Beach.
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Museum
Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center
A game-fish lagoon, stingray feeding, a nature trail to the river and the sea turtle hospital, on Hutchinson Island.
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Museum
Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse
A red brick lighthouse from 1860, 105 steps to the gallery and a museum of keepers, wars and settlers at its foot.
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Museum
Stuart Heritage Museum
The town’s attic, in a 1901 feed store on Flagler Avenue: photographs, tools, a pharmacy counter and the people who built the…
The lighthouse climb is 105 steps up a spiral stair, and children have to be at least 48 inches tall to go up. The view is worth every step.