Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

Dixie County · North Florida & First Coast

Fifty-three thousand acres where the Suwannee River meets the Gulf, protecting one of the least developed river deltas left in the country.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1979 and covers 53,000 acres across southeastern Dixie and northwestern Levy counties, about fifty miles southwest of Gainesville. It was created to protect one of the largest undeveloped river delta systems in the United States, taking in twenty miles of the Suwannee estuary and more than thirty miles of coast. The ground runs from salt marsh and tidal creek to bottomland hardwood swamp, cypress dome and pine. Timber companies logged it before the refuge existed, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is still converting managed forest back, replanting longleaf pine and burning on a schedule. Deer, wild turkey, bobcats and river otters live here year round. Manatees and bottlenose dolphins come into the creeks, bald eagles and swallow-tailed kites nest, and Gulf sturgeon and wood storks are both protected. More than 250 bird species have been recorded, at least 90 of them nesting. Walking is easy enough to find: the Dennis Creek Trail is a one-mile loop at the Shell Mound Unit, a boardwalk River Trail runs into floodplain forest near headquarters, and the unpaved Dixie Mainline Trail follows a 1920s railroad grade and suits a bicycle. The paved Lower Suwannee Nature Drive opens up the marsh. Paddlers put in at Shired Island, Suwannee, Weeks Landing, McCormick Creek and Shell Mound. It is open sunrise to sunset and free

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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