Title

New Pinellas County park is on the way

Who would have ever thought that you would have to actually travel to a park to see an orange grove in Pinellas County?

It wasn’t too many years ago that North Pinellas County was almost one big orange grove. As recently as the 1980s, orange groves still dotted the area. The subdivision where I live was an orange grove until it was subdivided in the mid-1980s. We still have a couple of orange trees in the backyard that are left over from those days.

Now, Pinellas County is about to open a new county park in Largo that will be devoted in part to preserving a bit of  Pinellas County’s orange-growing history.

The county bought 157 acres in Largo (at Belleair and Keene roads) from the Taylor family back in 1998 (for $13 million), and later they bought a few additional acres. This coming December, the county hopes to open the land as Eagle Lake Park. Some of the Taylor family’s orange groves will be preserved so people can see what orange grove farming was like in Pinellas County.

Pinellas County has some great parks, and Eagle Lake Park will just be the newest one. You can learn more at www.pinellascounty.org/park/

Tags: north pinellas, orange grove, parks

Pinellas County parks: Great places to go

Pinellas County offers some of the finest parks you will find anywhere.

Some, like Fort DeSoto at the southern tip of the county, have beaches that are considered among the best in the country. Others, like John Chestnut Sr. Park, offer plenty of lake frontage.

But Phillippe Park is special, because it offers lots of frontage on Tampa Bay; because it has been a public park since the 1940s, which is pretty much ancient history around here; because it is named after the man who brought the citrus industry to Tampa Bay; and because it has a big Indian mound within its borders.

 I attended a picnic at Phillippe Park this weekend and was reminded of how beautiful it is.

Tampa Bay from the park

There are a number of shelters you can reserve for picnics, and the grounds are kept in immaculate condition by the park rangers. 

There is plenty of parking, and Phillippe Park is a great place for a walk, or just a sit on one of the benches that overlook the water.

If you want to learn more about Pinellas County’s parks, you can click here.

Tags: parks, Phillippe Park, pinellas county, Tampa Bay