Morningside Nature Center in Alachua County, Florida

Photograph: Morningside Nature Center LHF cabin02.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY 2.5 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Alachua County attraction

Morningside Nature Center

Alachua County · North Florida & First Coast

A 416-acre city preserve in east Gainesville with seven miles of trails and a working farm dressed as an 1800s homestead.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The City of Gainesville established the center in 1970 and still runs it. The 416 acres carry seven miles of hiking trail through several habitats at once, including endangered sandhill, pine flatwoods, bayhead swamp and cypress dome, and the sandhill is the part worth slowing down for because so little of it is left anywhere. The other half of the place is the living history farm, which recreates a north Florida family homestead as it would have stood in the middle to late 1800s. Its centerpiece is a Florida Cracker cabin built by Irish immigrants around 1840 and moved onto the site in 1976. The farm keeps heritage breeds rather than modern ones: a Jersey cow, Ossabaw Island hogs, Dorking roosters and hens, and Gulf Coast sheep. Period crops go in the ground, including corn, sugarcane and cotton. Barnyard Buddies lets visitors feed the animals on a monthly Wednesday afternoon from September through May, and Frogs and Friends runs the first Friday of those months. Neither costs anything. The center is open Monday through Saturday, nine in the morning to 4:30, and closed Sundays

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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