Ravine Gardens State Park in Putnam County, Florida

Photograph: Ravinegardens01.jpg by Ebyabe · CC BY 2.5 · 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.

Putnam County attraction

Ravine Gardens State Park

Putnam County · North Florida & First Coast

Fifty-nine acres of steep ravine in Palatka, planted with azaleas by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Florida is flat almost everywhere, which is what makes this park strange. Spring-fed ravines cut down through the sandy ridge above the St. Johns River here, deep enough that the bottom is a different world from the rim. The Works Progress Administration built the park in the 1930s, putting in cypress buildings, rock gardens and fieldstone terraces, and planting something near 100,000 azaleas and shrubs down the slopes. Those plants are still here and still blooming, and the Florida Azalea Festival is held on the first weekend of March when they do. A 1.8-mile paved loop road runs around the rim for walkers, runners and cyclists, with interpretive trails dropping down into the ravines and suspension bridges crossing them. The Court of States and a 64-foot obelisk dedicated to Franklin D. Roosevelt stand at the entrance. The park went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. It opens from eight in the morning to sundown every day of the year

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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