Withlacoochee State Forest in Hernando County, Florida

Photograph: WSF; Tucker Hill Forestry Site.jpg by DanTD · CC BY 4.0 · 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.

Hernando County attraction

Withlacoochee State Forest

Hernando County · Gulf Coast

A hundred and fifty-seven thousand acres across four counties, in seven separate pieces, with three ghost towns inside it.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Withlacoochee State Forest covers 157,479 acres across Citrus, Pasco, Hernando and Sumter counties. The federal government bought the land from private owners between 1936 and 1939 under the Land Resettlement Administration, the Soil Conservation Service ran it until 1954 and the Forest Service after that, and a lease-purchase in 1958 handed it to Florida's Board of Forestry. It is not one block but seven wildlife management areas and several smaller tracts: Citrus at nearly 50,000 acres, Richloam at 58,000, Croom at over 20,000, plus Two Mile Prairie, Homosassa and Jumper Creek. The Hernando County part centers on Croom, which includes a designated motorcycle area for off-road riding, unusual on public land in Florida. Elsewhere the forest carries hiking, cycling, horse riding and canoeing, with the Florida Trail and the Withlacoochee State Trail both running through. Slash pine, longleaf pine, cypress, oak and maple grow here, and the Withlacoochee River runs through the major tracts. Three ghost towns sit inside the boundary: Mannfield, Croom and Richloam. The World Wildlife Fund once named it one of the ten coolest places in North America that people have never been to

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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

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

See local help in Hernando County →

Keep comparing

Return to the Things to Do choices in Hernando County.

Back to Hernando County