Cedar Point Preserve in Jacksonville, Florida

Cedar Point Preserve is a 618-acre City of Jacksonville conservation area on Cedar Point Road whose trails connect by bridge to the National Park Service's Cedar Point on Black Hammock Island.

The City of Jacksonville places the preserve 10 miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville and describes oak hammocks, pine flatwoods and a freshwater marsh system surrounded by an intricate salt marsh ecosystem. The National Park Service manages Cedar Point itself, approximately 400 acres at the south end of Black Hammock Island, where visitors can reach both upland hammocks and salt marsh by land and water.

A 245-foot trail bridge over Pumpkin Hill Creek, completed in summer of 2018, connects the City's 7.3 miles of trails to the Park Service property's additional 4.4 miles of hiking and biking trails, the City says. Both sit inside the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, which the Park Service says was established by 1988 legislation and today encompasses 46,000 acres within the city limits of Jacksonville. The same Park Service page records that the Cedar Point boat ramp area was added to the park in 1997, and that federal ownership amounts to 8,430 acres, just 18 percent of the preserve.

Both Cedar Point properties are reached by Cedar Point Road, which the Park Service route follows from New Berlin Road out to the end of Black Hammock Island.

The Park Service directions start from I-95 at the I-295 East Beltway (Exit 362 A), leave I-295 at Heckscher Drive (Exit 41), and follow Heckscher Drive about one-fourth mile to the traffic signal at New Berlin Road. New Berlin Road leads to a triangle intersection with Cedar Point Road, which bears right at Black Hammock Island and continues to the end of the road, where the Cedar Point boat ramp is on the left. From the Arlington area the Park Service routes drivers north on I-295 across the St. Johns River on the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward Bridge at Dames Point to the same Heckscher Drive exit.

The City's preserve has two trailhead parking areas on the way in. According to the City, Fitzpatrick Creek Trailhead, at 7116 Cedar Point Road, is on the south side of Cedar Point Road just west of Pumpkin Hill Road, and the Black Hammock Island Trailhead is approximately 1.2 miles further east. The City lists the preserve as open at sunrise and closed at sundown, and the Park Service lists the Cedar Point phone as 904.641.7155.

Archeological finds show people at Cedar Point for at least 4,000 years, according to a Park Service exhibit on Black Hammock Island.

The Park Service exhibit Sifting through the Past names broken pottery, brass ornaments and strings of beads made from shell and bone among those finds, and says that when Europeans arrived in the 1500s the people living at Cedar Point spoke a dialect of the Timucua language and fished, hunted and gathered oysters. For the wider Timucuan Preserve, the Park Service counts over 200 archeological sites providing evidence of over 6,000 years of human habitation.

In 1684, Spanish priests and about 300 Christian converts from Timucua-speaking tribes relocated their mission village from a nearby island to Cedar Point, the same exhibit states. Caught between England and Spain for control of the Atlantic coast, the mission at Cedar Point lasted only 12 years before relocating again. Another Park Service panel at the boat ramp notes that research on ancient shell middens at Cedar Point confirms the area has supported people and shellfish for thousands of years.

Tabby walls just off the blue trail on the Park Service side of Cedar Point are what remain of a 19th-century salt plantation.

The Park Service ruins page records that Cedar Point was heavily farmed as early as 1783, when the King of Spain granted it to the Samuel Mills family. The Fitzpatrick family acquired it in 1795 and started salt operations, followed by the Browards around 1848. During the Civil War the plantation's owners supplied salt to the Confederacy, and the owners' house and outbuildings, once visible from the St. Johns River, were shelled.

The labor was enslaved. The Park Service says at least fifteen skilled workers, held as slaves, constructed the main house, kitchen house and outbuildings of tabby, a concrete-like mixture made of oyster shells, and that enslaved people farmed and hunted the land, tended the household and boiled tons of salt from seawater. Archaeologists are systematically searching the Cedar Point area for artifacts of the daily lives of enslaved people, the Park Service adds.

Park Service photos from 2008 and 2020 show the Cedar Point walls before and after stabilization work by historic preservationists and masons, and because the ruins are unstable they are to be viewed from behind the marked signs. The exhibit at the ruins, Lives Etched in Salt and Oyster Shells, offers a reproduction tabby slab to touch in place of the fragile walls.

Buddy's Fish Camp was a popular boat launch and fishing destination at Cedar Point that lasted from the 1920s to the 1990s, the Park Service says.

The Park Service Cedar Point page says the area was managed as a pine plantation during the 20th century and later became a popular boat launch and fishing destination known as Buddy's Fish Camp. The Park Service's Fun Times at Fish Camp panel, at the end of the parking lot near the water, describes the routine: Buddy's would rent the boat, sell live bait, clean the catch and fry it, and anglers could spend the night in a rustic cabin.

The same panel lists flounder, sheepshead, black drum, croaker and redfish among favorite catches. The Cedar Point boat ramp at the same end of the road was refurbished and reopened with a ribbon cutting on August 25, 2009, according to a Park Service news release, which says the project was funded through the National Park Service Centennial Initiative with financial support from the City of Jacksonville.

Cedar Point offers hiking, off-road cycling and horseback riding on the City side, and hiking, biking, boating and birding on the Park Service side.

The City lists 7.3 miles of trails for hikers, off-road bicyclists and horseback riders, plus picnic facilities, wildlife viewing and scenic overlooks. On the federal side, the Park Service exhibits describe the Cedar Point Loop Trail through maritime hammock with views of the salt marsh and the ruins of an 1800s plantation, and the Pinelands Trail through pine uplands to the marsh alongside Cedar Point/Pumpkin Hill Creek. The Park Service says birdwatchers come to Cedar Point to see over 200 species of birds, including the painted bunting, and that the boat ramp is a popular launch site for boaters, kayakers and paddle boarders.

The City states that protecting Cedar Point Preserve maintains the salt marsh tidal creek ecosystem and the biological and hydrological functions of the upland forests, which provide habitat for many wintering and migratory birds. Park Service panels describe the change from open pine upland to maritime hammock of water oaks, magnolias and cabbage palms, and name ospreys, eagles, bobcats and white-tailed deer among the wildlife of Cedar Point's woods and marshes.

Cedar Point Preserve belongs to the 7 Creeks Recreation Area, which the City says encompasses over 5,600 acres of contiguous conservation lands, including Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park, Betz-Tiger Point Preserve, Cedar Point (NPS), Bogey Creek Preserve and Jim Wingate Preserve, with more than 30 miles of natural-surface trails. A Park Service panel at the bridge credits the City of Jacksonville, Florida State Parks, the National Park Service and the Timucuan Parks Foundation with working together since 1999 to connect more than 80,000 acres of protected habitat along the Nassau and St. Johns rivers. The foundation's own 7 Creeks site announces its 7 Creeks Fest for February 20, 2027.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the JaxParks Cedar Point Preserve page and the National Park Service's Cedar Point, ruins, exhibits, directions, fees and Timucuan Preserve pages.