Reopening
Three years of rebuilding, one ramp back in service, and a nature boardwalk still shut. Check before you drive to any of it.
Hurricane Ian in September 2022 did more damage to Marco Island's public water access than to almost anything else on the island, and the rebuild has been slow enough that visitors still arrive with out-of-date information.
The boat ramp at Caxambas Park, at the island's southern end, was described by Collier County officials as the most severely destroyed county facility in the storm. It was rebuilt under a multi-million-dollar contract and reopened in 2025, with the fuel service system replaced as a separate later phase and a small ship store operating on site.
It matters because Caxambas is the closest launch to the southern Ten Thousand Islands: Kice Island, Morgan Beach, the Cape Romano shoals and the creeks behind them. While it was shut, that traffic pushed onto other ramps, and anyone who boated here between 2023 and 2025 remembers the queues.
Expect it to be busy in season and at weekends. It operates sunrise to sunset.
At the other end of the ledger, the Briggs boardwalk at Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve has been closed for renovation, with no firm reopening published. The reserve's Environmental Learning Center, off Collier Boulevard between Marco and Naples, has remained open on its own schedule with a modest admission.
If a boardwalk walk through the reserve is the reason you were driving over, confirm what is open before you set off.
Three years after a major storm, facilities reopen one at a time and old listings linger. Before you rely on any ramp, dock, boardwalk, trail or pier around Marco, check its current status with the agency that runs it: Collier County for the ramps and beach parks, the state for the reserve and Collier-Seminole, the National Park Service for anything in Everglades National Park.
That is not caution for its own sake. It is the difference between a morning on the water and a morning in a car park.
SourcingSummarised from Collier County Parks and Recreation announcements regarding the reconstruction and 2025 reopening of the Caxambas Park boat ramp following Hurricane Ian, including the separately phased replacement of the fuel service system, and from Rookery Bay Research Reserve's published notice that its Briggs boardwalk is closed for renovation. Facility status changes without much notice; confirm with the managing agency before travelling.
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Who reported this
Boating & Fishing Editor
Wyatt ran backcountry charters out of Goodland for nine seasons before he started writing about them, and still keeps a skiff on a lift at the island's south end. He covers boating, fishing, the Ten Thousand Islands and the tides that decide all three. When a departure time on this site looks strange, it is because the water made it that way rather than the marketing.
Our newsroom is machine-assisted and human-edited: stories are drafted from verified public sources and checked before they publish. How that works is set out in our editorial standards.