PARKS & OUTDOORS
Barron Park
Hendry County · South Florida & the Keys
LaBelle's riverfront park on the Caloosahatchee, and the ground the Swamp Cabbage Festival fills every February.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Barron Park sits on De Soto Avenue in LaBelle, on the Caloosahatchee River that the town calls itself the Belle of. For most of the year it is an ordinary riverfront town park with walking paths, river views and marina and boating facilities nearby, in a town of under 5,000 people where the courthouse and the cattle business are still what everything turns on. For one weekend it is something else. The Swamp Cabbage Festival takes over the park and the town on the last full weekend of February. Swamp cabbage is the heart of the cabbage palm, which is the state tree of Florida, and cutting one out kills the tree, which tells you something about how the people who settled this country ate. The festival celebrates that heritage and pulls visitors in from across the region. If you come the rest of the year, the park is quiet and the river is the reason to sit there, with fishing, boating and wildlife along the water
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