PARKS & OUTDOORS
Torreya State Park
Liberty County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
Thirteen thousand seven hundred and thirty-five acres of bluff and ravine on the Apalachicola River, about thirteen miles north of Bristol.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
This does not look like Florida. Logan Hill, the high point, stands some three hundred feet above the river, and between it and the water the ground falls away in steephead ravines cut by seeping groundwater, holding plants more usually found in the Appalachians. The park is named for Torreya taxifolia, the Florida nutmeg, a tree that grows wild only on these limestone bluffs and nowhere else on earth. A blight has taken it close to extinction, with something like ninety-eight out of every hundred mature trees gone, and the remaining range covers about two hundred square kilometers in total. It was one of the first Florida state parks, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and they chose the site for its history as much as its scenery: six Confederate gun pits are still visible along Battery Bluff, dug to stop Union gunboats coming upriver, and the guns never fired. Weeping Ridge runs a mile to a small waterfall, Rock Creek Loop seven and a half miles, and the Torreya Challenge about seven. Hurricane Michael flattened much of the forest in 2018
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