Ballast Point Park in Hillsborough County, Florida

Photograph: Tampa Skyline With Boat Dock at Ballast Point Park.JPG by Heditor6 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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.

Hillsborough County attraction

Ballast Point Park

Hillsborough County · Gulf Coast

A bayfront park at the south end of Bayshore Boulevard in south Tampa, with a fishing pier, a boat ramp and a splash pad.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The point takes its name from sailing ships that dumped ballast stone here before loading cargo. In 1892 Chester and Emelia Chapin built the Ballast Point Pavilion at the end of a trolley line run by the Consumers Electric Light and Street Railway Company, and named the grounds Jules Verne Park after the French writer, who had put Tampa in his 1865 novel about a voyage to the moon. The name changed to Ballast Point in 1903. The City of Tampa runs it today at 5300 Interbay Boulevard, where Bayshore Boulevard ends, facing Hillsborough Bay with open water and the city skyline in view. The park has a 600-foot fishing pier, a boat ramp open around the clock, a splash pad for children, a playground, picnic shelters, the Joe Abrahams Fitness Center and a seafood place at the pier head. The pier took heavy damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 and is closed. In September 2026 the city was looking for engineers to design a replacement about 940 feet long, and no construction or reopening date has been announced. The rest of the park is open, from six in the morning until eight at night

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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