The Bat Tower Is Down. Here's Where Upper Sugarloaf Key Actually Goes Instead.

"Is the bat tower still there?" The question comes from whoever is visiting Upper Sugarloaf Key for the first time, usually somewhere around mile marker 17, usually because they read about it in a guidebook that's older than their car. The honest answer takes longer than they expect, and it's not the one they came looking for.

Perky's Bat Tower has been down since Hurricane Irma came through on September 10, 2017. It's been just over nine years now. Nobody has re-erected it, and as of the most recent visitor reports this year, no decision has even been made about whether they will. The 1929 structure, built by a fish-camp owner named Richter Clyde Perky to lure bats into eating his mosquito problem, earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for being exactly the kind of quirky failure the Keys are proud of: the bats never showed up, the tower stood anyway through decades of storms, and then Irma finally put it on its side.

If you live here, you already know this. If you don't, your GPS still doesn't.

What's Actually at the End of Bat Tower Road Now

The unmarked turn is still there, a right off US-1 near the old Sugarloaf Airport sign, and people still find it because trip-planning apps and old blog posts keep pointing at the coordinates. What they find is a toppled wooden frame behind a fence, somewhat intact, entirely horizontal, with an osprey nest now occupying the spot where the bats were supposed to live. It's a five-minute stop from the car, and it was always more of a curiosity than a destination. The interesting part isn't the wreckage. It's that the detour habit didn't die with the tower. It just moved.

The Detour That Replaced It

Ask anyone who actually lives on Upper Sugarloaf Key where they take a first-time guest now, and the answer is usually Sammy Creek Landing, not Bat Tower Road. It's a different kind of stop: not a five-minute curiosity but an afternoon.

To get there, turn off Sugarloaf Boulevard onto CR 939A and follow it about two and a half miles to the landing on the left. It's a hand-launch site only, no trailer boats, which keeps the crowd small and the water quiet. It's part of the Florida Keys Overseas Paddling Trail, and from the shoreline you can look south-southeast and pick out American Shoal Light, first lit in 1880 as the last of the hurricane-resistant reef lighthouses built to mark the Florida Reef. There's a covered picnic pavilion, a stretch of restored native vegetation that draws butterflies, and clean, shallow water that's easy on beginners and good for wading birds and mangrove cuckoos if you're patient. Parking is limited, so weekend mornings fill up fast, and depending on which visit you read about, the bathroom situation ranges from adequate to nonexistent, so plan accordingly. Bring water shoes too. The shoreline is coral pebble, not sand, and it's rough on bare feet.

Here's the contrast in plain terms:

One of these is a rumor people keep chasing. The other is a working part of the neighborhood's weekend rhythm.

Getting on the Water, Guided or Not

Sammy Creek rewards people who bring their own kayak or canoe and don't mind carrying it a short distance from the road to the concrete launch. But if you'd rather not haul gear, or you want someone who actually knows the water, Get Up and Go Kayaking runs guided clear-kayak eco-tours that depart from Sugarloaf Marina at 17015 Overseas Highway, a few minutes up the road. Their two-hour tours run through the mangrove tunnels and shallow flats of Sugarloaf Key, and the clear-bottom kayaks turn the paddle into something closer to snorkeling: guides point out small sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and starfish moving underneath you as you go. Groups top out around ten paddlers, kayaks are tandem with a 250-pound-per-person weight limit, and the whole thing runs on tide and weather, so a guide's route can shift if conditions call for it.

What the guided version buys you over doing it yourself:

• A guide who knows which mangrove tunnel is passable that day and which one the tide has closed
• Clear kayaks, which most people don't own, for an unobstructed view of what's underneath
• No gear to load, unload, or rinse off afterward
• A fixed two-hour window instead of an open-ended afternoon of trial and error

Neither option requires a boat, a captain's license, or a reservation weeks out. That's the point. This is low-friction, low-cost recreation that residents actually use on a regular Saturday, not a once-a-year splurge.

Where the Day Actually Ends

The circuit has a predictable finish. Mangrove Mama's, an old-school open-air spot on the highway, has been a fixture long enough that most locals don't think of it as a destination so much as a given. For something a little more composed, South of the Seven sits at the historic Sugarloaf Lodge at mile marker 17 Gulfside, open Tuesday through Saturday with the bar starting at 4:30 p.m. and dinner served from 5 to 9. It's known for a bone-in ribeye big enough to share and a Thai-style whole fish with a saki-infused chili sauce, served with sunset views over Sugarloaf Sound that make the wait for a table feel less like waiting.

Why This Is the Real Story

None of this is about a landmark. It's about what a neighborhood does when its one advertised curiosity quietly disappears and nobody outside the community notices for almost a decade. Upper Sugarloaf Key didn't need a rebuilt bat tower to keep functioning as a place people want to spend a Saturday. It had Sammy Creek Landing the whole time, a free hand-launch with a lighthouse view, a marina five minutes up the road running clear-kayak tours into the mangroves, and two restaurants that have quietly done the job of "where we always end up" for years. The tower was never the reason people stayed. It just used to be the reason they stopped the car.

If you're the kind of person who already knows this weekend circuit by heart, you probably also have a good sense of what a home near it is worth, and what it takes to hang onto that kind of access when the right property comes along. If a move is somewhere on your horizon, or you're just curious what a place near Sammy Creek Landing would actually cost, Key West Sherri is a straightforward conversation away.