WATER & COAST
Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center
Charlotte County · Gulf Coast
Nearly three miles of trail at Alligator Creek, where fresh water and salt water meet, run by a nonprofit founded in 1987.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center was founded in 1987 and runs Alligator Creek Preserve with Florida State Parks. The ground is where freshwater and saltwater systems meet, which gives it pine flatwoods and hammock on the high side and mangrove and salt marsh on the low. Nearly three miles of trail cross it. The Eagle Point Trail is a one-mile loop, and a route stitched from parts of all four main trails comes to 2.9 miles; the others are the Three Lake, Pine Flatwoods, Chet Lewis, Hidden Hammock and Old Datsun trails. Alligators are often out on the shorelines near the dock. There is a large building on site with a gift shop and restrooms, open from ten until three on weekdays from the middle of October through April. That seasonal opening is worth planning around: outside those months the trails stay open but the building does not. The preserve is run jointly with Florida State Parks, which is why some of the trail names here and in the state park overlap. Alligator Creek itself is the line where the fresh and salt systems meet, and walking from one end of the trail network to the other takes you across it
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