Hendry County Florida map | LaBelle and Clewiston

A useful way to read this Hendry County Florida map is to locate LaBelle in the west and Clewiston in the east before looking for smaller communities. LaBelle, the county seat, stands on the Caloosahatchee River where State Roads 29 and 80 meet. Clewiston anchors eastern Hendry beside the southwestern edge of Lake Okeechobee on the shared U.S. 27–SR 80 corridor.

Those two cities do not form one continuous metropolitan area. Farms, ranches, wetlands, and managed canals fill much of the land between them. Use SR 80 as the main east–west baseline, then place Port LaBelle, Fort Denaud, Felda, Harlem, Montura, and Pioneer Plantation within their own road and drainage settings.

Hendry County Florida map showing LaBelle, Clewiston, Harlem — Hendry County map centered on LaBelle and Clewiston

Download the Hendry County map

Map file: County reference map
File format: ZIP

Download the Hendry County map

Table of Contents

Quick Facts

State: Florida
County seat: LaBelle
Incorporated cities: LaBelle and Clewiston
Population: 39,619 in the 2020 census; July 1, 2025 estimate of 48,276
Change from the 2020 estimate base: 21.8 percent
Selected unincorporated places: Port LaBelle, Fort Denaud, Felda, Harlem, Montura, and Pioneer Plantation
Regional roads: State Road 80, State Road 29, and U.S. 27
Water features: Caloosahatchee River/C-43 Canal, Lake Okeechobee, and agricultural drainage canals
Land and density: 1,155.95 square miles; 34.3 people per square mile in 2020
County FIPS code: 12051

Only LaBelle and Clewiston are incorporated municipalities. Other labeled places may be unincorporated communities, census-designated places, or rural subdivisions. A label on a small-scale map therefore does not imply that every place has a city government or the same kind of legal boundary.

The Census land-area measure excludes water, and the 2020 density of 34.3 people per square mile confirms how dispersed settlement is across the county. A location that appears close in a county overview can require a long detour around a canal or limited crossing. Match a destination to its nearest highway and community before estimating travel.

The 2025 estimate is 8,653 above the 2020 base, but that growth should not be spread evenly across the map. The LaBelle–Port LaBelle settlement area, the Clewiston–Harlem area, and rural divisions such as Montura and Pioneer Plantation use different road and drainage systems. Population establishes scale; current aerial imagery and county land-use layers establish where development has actually occurred.

A LaBelle or Clewiston mailing address does not necessarily fall inside either city limit. Only those two cities are incorporated, while the surrounding census places and rural communities remain under county or other special-district arrangements. Municipal boundaries, parcels, zoning, and service jurisdictions must be checked as separate layers.

What the Map Shows

LaBelle organizes the western half of Hendry County. SR 29 runs north–south through the city, SR 80 crosses east–west, and the Caloosahatchee creates a separate water corridor with limited bridge points. Port LaBelle is a broad unincorporated area east of the city despite its similar name; Fort Denaud is west of LaBelle along the river.

Clewiston has a lakeside setting at the southwestern edge of Lake Okeechobee beside the Herbert Hoover Dike. U.S. 27 and SR 80 share the Sugarland Highway alignment through town. Harlem begins directly south of Clewiston as a distinct adjacent community. Reaching the lake itself may still require a designated approach across or around dike and canal infrastructure.

Montura and Pioneer Plantation lie south of the principal LaBelle–Clewiston line. Montura is southwest of Clewiston, while Pioneer Plantation is farther west and southwest in the interior. Their gridded rural roads are tied to canals and drainage districts, not to the lakeshore street pattern, and not every apparent connection is a through road.

Felda is the key place name on SR 29 south of LaBelle. It separates travel toward Collier County from eastbound travel toward Clewiston and supplies an orientation point for County Road 832 and the Okaloacoochee Slough landscape. This southern route belongs to a different geographic system from the U.S. 27 corridor near the lake.

LaBelle: county government, the SR 29–SR 80 junction, and Caloosahatchee bridge crossings define the western anchor.
Fort Denaud: identifies the river corridor west of LaBelle and a separate bridge approach; it is not Port LaBelle.
Port LaBelle: is a broad unincorporated settlement east of LaBelle rather than an extension of the city limit.
Clewiston: links U.S. 27/SR 80, the Herbert Hoover Dike, and the southwestern shore of Lake Okeechobee.
Harlem: is the separate community immediately south of Clewiston on the agricultural side of the dike corridor.
Montura and Pioneer Plantation: organize the gridded rural roads and drainage canals south of SR 80.
Felda: connects SR 29, CR 832, and the approach to Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest.

These places form three different map systems. LaBelle, Fort Denaud, and Port LaBelle are organized by the river and SR 80; Clewiston and Harlem by the lake, dike, and U.S. 27; Felda, Montura, and Pioneer Plantation by rural roads and canal crossings. The open land between them is part of the county’s structure, not a missing urban label.

Fort Denaud derives from a nineteenth-century Caloosahatchee military post and now identifies a community and crossing west of LaBelle. Port LaBelle lies east of the city. Because “Fort” and “Port” differ by one letter but point in opposite directions from LaBelle, both spelling and river position should be recorded in an address search.

County Layout and Location

Hendry County borders Glades County on the north, Palm Beach County on the east, Broward County at the southeast, Collier County on the south, and Lee County on the west. The northeastern corner reaches into Lake Okeechobee. A legal-boundary map that allocates lake water can therefore show a different outline from a map focused on roads and dry land.

SR 80 enters from Lee County, crosses LaBelle, continues through Clewiston, and exits toward Palm Beach County. It is the clearest east–west reference for the county, but it does not remain parallel to the Caloosahatchee at every point. A trip that changes sides of the river should be planned around an actual bridge rather than a straight line on the overview.

SR 29 passes through LaBelle between Glades County to the north and Felda and Collier County to the south. U.S. 27 is the eastern regional route through Clewiston, leading northwest toward Moore Haven and east toward Palm Beach County. There is no Interstate within Hendry County, so SR 80, SR 29, and U.S. 27 form the essential long-distance framework.

The managed C-43 reach of the Caloosahatchee system runs westward from the Lake Okeechobee watershed toward Lee County. At LaBelle, the river and its bridges visibly divide the community. At Clewiston, Lake Okeechobee, the Herbert Hoover Dike, the rim canal, and the agricultural canal grid dominate. Western and eastern Hendry require different visual cues even though they share one water system.

Hendry reaches Lake Okeechobee only in the northeast, and Clewiston is the direct lakeside anchor. LaBelle lies far west on the Caloosahatchee, while Montura, Pioneer Plantation, and Felda belong to southern interior road-and-canal systems. “Toward Lake Okeechobee” is therefore not a useful single direction for every eastern or southern destination.

The Herbert Hoover Dike is a 143-mile flood-control structure surrounding nearly all of Lake Okeechobee. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers marked substantial completion of its major rehabilitation in 2023. At Clewiston, the dike, rim canal, and water-control structures intervene between city streets and the lake, so visible shoreline proximity does not imply access at an arbitrary point.

Local Context

Large agricultural blocks and straight canals create the geometric pattern east and south of Clewiston. These lines reveal a managed drainage and water-supply landscape rather than a natural stream network. When a road and canal run beside each other, identify which line is which; land across a canal may be physically close but accessible only from a distant crossing.

West of LaBelle and south of SR 80, the Caloosahatchee C-43 Reservoir officially opened in July 2025. The South Florida Water Management District describes a roughly 10,000-acre facility holding about 170,000 acre-feet, or 55 billion gallons. It stores wet-season basin runoff and Lake Okeechobee releases and supports dry-season freshwater flow to the estuary, so it is managed Everglades-restoration infrastructure rather than a natural lake.

Straight embankments, perimeter canals, pump works, and control structures give the reservoir a strongly geometric aerial signature. Pre-completion imagery may show excavation or empty cells, while operating-water levels can alter the visible surface after opening. This site requires an imagery date and an infrastructure source before its present condition is interpreted.

Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest covers 32,370 acres across western Hendry and northeastern Collier counties. The Florida Forest Service describes its namesake slough as a north–south wetland system whose water supports the Fakahatchee Strand and Big Cypress natural systems. County Road 832 is the main access reference, but current forest rules determine which internal routes are open.

The Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation is a prominent land unit in southeastern Hendry County. Roads visible nearby do not make reservation governance, land status, or public access equivalent to surrounding unincorporated county land. Anyone planning a visit should rely on current Seminole Tribe and facility information rather than assumptions drawn from the county road pattern.

The Seminole Tribe identifies museums, ranching, citrus, recreation, and other tribal enterprises within Big Cypress. A county overview necessarily simplifies that large land unit, but the facilities do not all share the same public-access conditions. A road line reaching the reservation should never be treated as blanket permission to use every internal road.

Agriculture explains much of the eastern canal grid and the large western and southern parcels. Florida’s agriculture department reports about $633 million in Hendry agricultural products sold in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, placing the county among the state leaders. Sugarcane, citrus, pasture, cattle, and related operations create different road and drainage patterns; farm lanes and harvest routes are not automatically public through roads.

Hendry County was created from eastern Lee County in 1923, with LaBelle selected as the seat, and was named for Captain Francis Asbury Hendry. That history joined the upper Caloosahatchee settlements in the west with Lake Okeechobee and Everglades lowlands in the east. The county’s two-center pattern remains a practical consequence of that geography.

The county therefore combines LaBelle’s river-oriented government center, Clewiston’s lake-and-agriculture economy, dispersed interior settlements, southwestern wetland forest, and a southeastern reservation. To understand an address, determine its nearest center and trunk road, then check whether a canal, dike, controlled area, or property boundary interrupts the apparent route.

Ways to Use This Map

Compare LaBelle and Clewiston along the SR 80 east–west corridor
Separate the SR 29 route to Felda and Okaloacoochee Slough from the U.S. 27 lakeside route
Explain the relative positions of Port LaBelle, Fort Denaud, Harlem, Montura, and Pioneer Plantation
Contrast the Caloosahatchee River, C-43 reservoir project, Lake Okeechobee, and eastern canal grid
Identify the directions of Lee, Glades, Palm Beach, Broward, and Collier counties
Use the overview as an index to detailed FDOT road maps and Hendry County GIS products

This is a county-scale orientation resource, not a navigation or legal map. Turn-by-turn travel, hurricane evacuation, flood exposure, dike and canal access, parcel boundaries, and jurisdictional decisions require current FDOT information, official flood products, Hendry County GIS records, and guidance from the responsible land or water agency.

LaBelle-area address: check SR 29/SR 80, side of the Caloosahatchee, and the actual bridge.
Clewiston-area address: separate U.S. 27/SR 80, Harlem, and the dike or rim-canal side.
Port LaBelle versus Fort Denaud: compare spelling and east-versus-west position from LaBelle.
Montura or Pioneer Plantation: verify which grid road reaches a trunk route and where canal bridges exist.
Felda or state forest: use SR 29 and CR 832, then check current forest-road openings.
C-43 Reservoir or Lake Okeechobee: prioritize dikes, control structures, designated access, and imagery date over the apparent water outline.

A reproducible location workflow is incorporated city or rural community, trunk road, side of river or canal, actual crossing, then parcel layer. Because roads and canals often run parallel or repeat in grids, record the legend, layer name, update date, and map scale. Those notes allow a later reader to determine whether a disagreement came from changed conditions or from different source geometry.

Wet-season conditions and tropical weather can change low roads, forest routes, canal levels, and dike access. A field copy should carry the verification date, coordinates, nearest incorporated city, and an alternate crossing. Current county emergency guidance and FDOT restrictions take priority over straight-line distance on the overview.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do LaBelle and Clewiston form one urban area along SR 80?

No. LaBelle is the county seat and western river center, while Clewiston is the eastern center associated with Lake Okeechobee, U.S. 27, and surrounding agriculture. Broad rural and agricultural land separates their developed areas along SR 80. Use LaBelle as the reference for county government and Clewiston as the reference for destinations in the far east.

Are Lake Okeechobee and Montura in the same direction from Clewiston?

No. Lake Okeechobee and its dike are on Clewiston’s northern and eastern edge. Harlem is immediately south of the city, but Montura is farther southwest in the rural interior. A route to Montura should be checked through county roads and canal crossings rather than traced along the lakeshore.

Is Port LaBelle part of the City of LaBelle, and is it the same place as Fort Denaud?

No. Port LaBelle is a broad unincorporated settlement east of LaBelle, while Fort Denaud is a separate Caloosahatchee community west of the city. Their English names differ by Port and Fort. A LaBelle mailing address also does not prove that a parcel is inside the city limit, so municipal and county layers must be checked separately.

Are all of the straight lines south of Clewiston roads?

No. Roads and agricultural or drainage canals run beside one another and form repeated grids around Harlem, Montura, and Pioneer Plantation. A parcel across a canal may have no nearby bridge, and a farm line may be private. Confirm the symbol in the legend and trace the connection in FDOT or county GIS data.

Is the C-43 Reservoir a natural lake with open access around its shore?

No. The reservoir is a managed water-storage and Everglades-restoration facility that opened in 2025. Embankments, pumps, control structures, and perimeter canals govern the site. Publicly available areas and operating conditions must be taken from current South Florida Water Management District guidance.

Can roads in Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest and Big Cypress Reservation be treated like ordinary county roads?

No. Forest roads are managed by the Florida Forest Service and may close because of weather or management activity. Big Cypress is Seminole tribal land with facility-specific access. The county overview establishes location, while each managing authority determines current entry and road use.

Sources

Green Map creates custom-edited map images using open geographic data sources such as geoBoundaries, Natural Earth, OpenStreetMap, and government open data.

These maps are edited visual materials, not raw data files, and are provided for education, documents, presentations, and graphic reference.