Sam Atkins Park

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Sam Atkins Park is the town's recreation ground at Blountstown, with a large parking area beside the baseball diamonds, restrooms, and accessible parking and restrooms. It opens daily from sunrise to sunset. Behind the playing fields the ground turns into something else: two viewing structures on a small pond and a boardwalk through swamp on the north side, with pine around the perimeter and woodland trails carrying on into the neighboring Panhandle Pioneer Settlement. Birders record red-headed woodpecker, brown-headed nuthatch, eastern bluebird, Swainson's warbler, wood thrush, bald eagle, broad-winged hawk and Mississippi kite here, along with evening bats and Brazilian free-tailed bats. More than sixty species of butterfly have been logged in the county. The park is the practical center of Blountstown recreation: the ball fields are used by the schools and the leagues, and the boardwalk and the pond sit directly behind them, so a parent waiting through a game can walk into swamp woodland in two minutes. The trails connect straight through to the Panhandle Pioneer Settlement, and the Blountstown Greenway spur reaches the park as well, which means the recreation ground, the museum village and the rail trail are all one place on foot