Myakka River State Park: A Hog Ranch That Became Florida’s First Wild and Scenic River

Seventy-four feet up a tower east of Sarasota, the view runs flat to the horizon across palm, oak and wet prairie with nothing built in it. Most people come for the suspension bridge strung through the canopy below, and that walk is worth the trip, but it is not what makes the place unusual.

Florida’s First Wild and Scenic River

In 1985 the Florida Legislature gave a 34-mile stretch of the Myakka through Sarasota County the state’s first Wild and Scenic designation, and it is worth keeping straight that this is the state program rather than the federal one. The park built around that stretch covers more than 37,000 acres, and it sits inside a block of conservation land running past 80,000. That scale is the reason the wildlife here behaves the way it does.

From Cattle Ranch to Park

The Myakka valley was a working cattle and swine operation before the state took it over, and the transformation was done by hand. Through the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps cut the roads and raised the log structures that are still standing and still in use. It helps to know that while you are walking through it, because this is not preserved wilderness so much as ranchland that a Depression-era work crew turned into something else.

Gators in the Dry Season

Winter and spring draw the water down, and as the river shrinks the alligators concentrate in whatever is left, which is why the dry months are when people come home with photographs. Herons, wood storks and roseate spoonbills work the same shallows. Those months are also the only stretch of the year when the weather cooperates, and summer reverses both conditions at once.

What to Know Before You Go

Admission is six dollars per vehicle and the gates are open from 8 a.m. to sunset every day of the year. The one thing worth checking first is the North Gate, which operates only on weekends and state holidays between 8 and 5. Route your drive to that entrance on a weekday and you will end up doubling back to the main gate on State Road 72.

Official page: Myakka River State Park