Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park in Charlotte County, Florida

Photograph: Charlotte Harbor Pres SP01.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.

Charlotte County attraction

Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park

Charlotte County · Gulf Coast

One of the largest state parks in Florida, wrapped around Charlotte Harbor itself.

QUESTIONS THAT NAME THIS PLACE

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The state gives its size as 42,518 acres in one place and about 46,000 in another, and most of that is not walkable ground at all: it is mangrove shoreline, tidal creek and salt marsh held undeveloped to keep the estuary intact. The park protects four aquatic preserves, Gasparilla Sound and Charlotte Harbor, Cape Haze, Matlacha Pass and Pine Island Sound. That is the point of the place. Charlotte Harbor is among the more productive estuaries on the Gulf coast, and the fish caught out in the open harbor are spawned and grown in the shallows this park keeps clear of docks and seawalls. Where the ground is high the woods are pine flatwoods and hammock. Trails run from several separate access points rather than from a single entrance, the Old Datsun Trail among them, and the park is site 22 on the southern section of the Great Florida Birding Trail. There is no entrance charge. The gates open at eight in the morning and close at sundown, every day of the year, holidays included

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

MOVING TO CHARLOTTE COUNTY?Fourteen services. One business each.

Attorneys, movers, insurance, title companies, roofers and nine more — one listed business per service in Charlotte County.

See local help in Charlotte County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Charlotte County.

Back to Charlotte County