Florida

Here's the route an East Coast hurricane takes, superimposed over the southeast's coastline:

At a guess, this is why Florida has the shape and topography it has.

Hurricanes, like Ike, pack a nasty right hook. On the west side, the winds blow south... finally, southwest. Over the millions, I'd say dozens of millions, of years the Caribbean hosted hurricanes, almost every summer the North American side of it could count on that year's summer flowers and branches being blown off the continent to the ocean.

At first, yes, it's in the ocean: shoreline doesn't extend that far, by itself. But in the ocean, corals and other shallow-water life form colonies. Sealife likes the shallows, and irregular surfaces (like downed palm-trees). The dead sealife consolidates the shallows and grow further southeast.

A few million years of hurricanes blowing matter in the same direction, and you get a peninsula of soft, low earth. Someday Florida will become a bridge to the West Side National Park. Cuba, next.