Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in Broward County, Florida

Photograph: Ft Laud FL Hugh Taylor Birch SP04.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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.

Broward County attraction

Hugh Taylor Birch State Park

Broward County · South Florida & the Keys

The land Hugh Taylor Birch began buying in 1893, now a state park on East Sunrise Boulevard between the Intracoastal and A1A.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Birch was a Chicago attorney who came to south Florida in 1893 looking for somewhere quiet to build. He found a small village called Fort Lauderdale and started buying oceanfront at roughly a dollar an acre, ending up with a stretch three and a half miles long; his own estate ran to 180 acres. At ninety years old, in 1940, he built the house he meant to live in, and he died in 1943. The park was established in 1941. That house is now the Terramar Visitor Center, Mediterranean and Art Deco in style, holding exhibits on Birch, on the history of Fort Lauderdale and on the local ecology, open Monday through Friday from nine in the morning until four. A freshwater lagoon a mile long runs through the park and kayaks can be rented on it. Two short walking trails cross the grounds, and there is group and youth camping. The gate opens at eight in the morning and closes at sundown, every day of the year. What makes it remarkable is simply where it is: a large piece of undeveloped ground in the middle of a built-up beach city

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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