Doctors Lake Park

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Doctors Lake Park sits at the corner of White Owl Lane and Lakeshore Drive North on Fleming Island. It is a small park, about an acre, and the county calls it passive, meaning it is built for sitting and fishing rather than for ball fields. What it has is the water. A fishing pier runs 320 feet out over Doctors Lake, there is a covered picnic pavilion on shore, and small boats and canoes can be put in here. There is no charge. The lake it looks out on is larger than people expect. Doctors Lake covers about 13 square miles and is not really a lake at all but an estuary, brackish because it connects to the St. Johns River through Doctors Inlet, which U.S. 17 crosses between Orange Park and the rural part of the county. The tide moves in it. Docks line much of the shore, and people boat, fish and water-ski. Orange Park lies along the north shore and Lakeside to the west, with Jacksonville across the river to the east. The south end breaks into two small creeks running out of swamp. Zephaniah Kingsley established Laurel Grove Plantation on this shore in the early 1800s, and the community at the northern inlet still carries the Laurel Grove name