Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve in Duval County, Florida

Photograph: Timucuan salt marsh.jpg by NPS Photo/F. Southwell · Public domain · 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.

Duval County attraction

Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve

Duval County · North Florida & First Coast

Forty-six thousand acres of marsh, waterway and history in northeastern Duval County, holding Fort Caroline and Kingsley Plantation inside it.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve was established on February 16, 1988, and covers 46,000 acres of wetland and waterway across the northeastern corner of Duval County. The National Park Service runs it jointly with the city of Jacksonville and Florida State Parks, which is why a visitor moves between federal, city and state ground without noticing. Fort Caroline National Memorial and Kingsley Plantation both sit inside it; Kingsley is the oldest standing plantation house in the state. The preserve is named for the Timucua, who held 35 chiefdoms across northern Florida and southern Georgia when Europeans arrived. Archaeologists from the University of North Florida have taken pottery out of Black Hammock Island dating to 2500 BCE, among the second-oldest pottery found anywhere in America. There are trails through several parts of it and a visitor center near Fort Caroline, with Junior Ranger activities and an artist residency at Kingsley. In June 2020 the preserve took in another 2,500 acres of marsh along the Nassau River. More than 1.1 million people visited in 2025

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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