Bimini

Alice Town on North Bimini is the main settlement: a single road, the King's Highway, runs its length past the marinas, bars and guesthouses. The northern end of the island was developed in the 2010s into a large resort and marina complex with a ferry terminal. South Bimini has the airport, a nature trail and quieter beaches.

Just offshore lies the Bimini Road, a straight line of large, rectangular limestone blocks in shallow water that has attracted speculation since its discovery in 1968; geologists consider it a natural beachrock formation. Divers and snorkellers also visit the wreck of the SS Sapona, a concrete-hulled ship grounded in a 1926 hurricane, and the island is known for encounters with wild dolphins and, for experienced divers, hammerhead sharks in winter.

Bimini is a short trip from Florida by air or fast ferry, which makes it popular for weekends and for boaters crossing the Gulf Stream on their own vessels. It is small, easygoing and oriented around the water.

During Prohibition Bimini prospered as a staging post for liquor shipped to Florida, and Alice Town's bars still trade on stories from that era. Legend places Ponce de León's fountain of youth here. The mangrove creeks of North Bimini, where a local guide took Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964 to work on his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, are a quiet contrast to the marinas and an important nursery for fish, rays and the lemon sharks studied at the island's long-running shark research station.