Stuart, the river town and the inlet

A town on a bend in the river

Stuart sits where the north and south forks of the St. Lucie River meet and turn east toward the inlet. Downtown is six blocks of 1920s storefronts on Osceola Street and Flagler Avenue, with the Riverwalk boardwalk along the water, a stage for free concerts and docks where boats tie up for lunch. The Roosevelt Bridge carries US 1 over the river beside the old railroad lift bridge, and the view from its sidewalk at sunset is worth the walk.

Stuart has called itself the Sailfish Capital of the World since the 1940s, and the fishing still supports the claim: from November to March the sailfish are a few miles off the inlet, and the charter fleet leaves the marinas before the sun is up.

What a day here looks like

Coffee downtown, then the Riverwalk before it gets hot. Drive across the Evans Crary bridge to Hutchinson Island: Stuart Beach for the sand and the café, the House of Refuge and the Elliott Museum for the afternoon, then back across the river for dinner on a dock. The downtown lots are free and the beach lot fills by ten on winter weekends.

If you have a boat, the St. Lucie Inlet is the gateway to everything offshore. It is calm on an incoming tide with light wind and dangerous on an outgoing tide against an east wind, and the Coast Guard station at the inlet posts the conditions every morning.

Getting here and around

Stuart is forty miles north of West Palm Beach on I-95, or on the slower and prettier US 1. Palm Beach International is forty-five minutes away. There is no passenger rail stop in Stuart yet; the nearest is West Palm Beach. Downtown is walkable, a car is needed for everything else, and the two island bridges are the only places traffic ever stalls.

When to come

November to April is the season: dry days in the seventies, sailfish offshore and every weekend full. May and October are the quiet shoulders. June to September is hot, wet most afternoons and empty, with the best rates of the year and sea turtles nesting on the beaches at night. Hurricane season runs June to November, and the coast’s worst recent storms arrived in September and October.