Indian Hills Recreation Area in St. Lucie County, Florida

The Indian Hills Recreation Area is a 65-acre park on Savannah Road in Fort Pierce, listed among the St. Lucie County preserves but managed by the City of Fort Pierce, with trails, pavilions, disc golf and paddling access (county Indian Hills page).

The St. Lucie County page gives the address as Savannah Road, Fort Pierce, FL 34982, and lists (772) 467-3000, the City of Fort Pierce, as the contact (county Indian Hills page). The county preserves index sums the site up as a 1.4-mile paved SUN Trail segment tying together disc golf and a canoe launch (St. Lucie County preserves page). It is a separate place from the Indian Hills Golf Course, which has its own guide on this site.

The park is also a stormwater treatment site. The City of Fort Pierce Engineering Department files the project under its Stormwater Division's improvement projects and says it treats runoff from a 1,242-acre watershed of urban and commercially developed land before it discharges into the Indian River Lagoon (City of Fort Pierce project page). A 2014 city presentation shows the project was formerly called the Heathcote Botanical Gardens Expansion (2014 City of Fort Pierce presentation).

St. Lucie County splits the Fort Pierce park in two: the northern section has picnic pavilions, a nature and fitness trail and a disc golf course, and the southern section has a picnic gazebo, a nature trail and a canoe launch (county Indian Hills page).

All rows come from the St. Lucie County Indian Hills Recreation Area page, whose photo gallery is captioned with the greenway trail, a picnic pavilion, disc golf, the fitness trail and the canoe launch. The St. Lucie County preserves page says the county's preserves are open dawn to dusk every day with no gate fee, no parking fee and no reservation (St. Lucie County preserves page).

The paved Shared-Use Nonmotorized (SUN) Trail segment at Indian Hills runs 1.4 miles from just south of Savannah Road to Indian Hills Drive in Fort Pierce and is 10 feet wide (county Indian Hills page).

St. Lucie County says the segment improves access and trail connectivity within the recreation area, and its amenity list labels it the ECG SUN Trail (county Indian Hills page). Along it the county lists bald cypress, Carolina willow, grasses and oaks, slash pine, cabbage palm and sea grape, and names great blue heron, tri-colored heron, alligator, black-bellied whistling duck and eastern box turtle as commonly seen wildlife.

The city's 2015 project update describes a walking trail that encircles the lake, with two pedestrian bridges over open water; the 2014 Fort Pierce presentation lists those bridges as 12 feet wide (2015 City of Fort Pierce project update; 2014 presentation). The 2015 update also says Phase II would connect the north and south improvements with a path.

Indian Hills runs runoff through a treatment train of six best management practices, from a larger lake to alum injection, littoral zones, floating plant mats and bio swales (City of Fort Pierce project page; 2015 update).

The table follows the City of Fort Pierce Indian Hills project page. The 2014 Fort Pierce presentation adds detail: about 95,000 cubic yards of excavation, an additional 3 acres of littoral planting zones, nearly one acre of vegetative mats whose plants are harvested yearly, alum injected into incoming runoff at a metered rate, and a 22-space parking area with pervious pavers over a stone reservoir (2014 presentation). The county page describes the finished project as treating the 1,242-acre watershed and improving the quality of runoff that flows to the lagoon (county Indian Hills page).

The City of Fort Pierce lists a funding total of $4,761,325, with St. Lucie County as the property owner (2015 City of Fort Pierce project update).

Every amount is quoted from the May 2015 Fort Pierce update, which says the City Commission approved the competitively bid contract in February 2014, that construction began on June 1, 2014, and that $2,631,563 had been spent on construction when the update was written. The two city documents give different contract totals for Phase I: $2,787,688 in the 2015 update and $2,787,588.42 in the 2014 presentation, which breaks the second figure into stormwater improvements, landscaping and erosion control, utility relocations and the pedestrian trail (2014 presentation). The 2014 presentation also says St. Lucie County is responsible for the Florida Communities Trust grant conditions, including the canoe launch, gazebo and observation pier.

According to a 2014 City of Fort Pierce presentation, St. Lucie County acquired 64 acres from the City of Fort Pierce in spring 2008 for the Heathcote Botanical Gardens expansion, which became the Indian Hills Recreation Area stormwater project (2014 presentation).

The county now lists the site at 65 acres under City of Fort Pierce management (county Indian Hills page), while the 2014 presentation's acquisition figure is 64 acres and the 2015 update describes the treatment train as spread over 60 acres of land (2015 update). The 2015 Fort Pierce update calls the work a joint St. Lucie County and City of Fort Pierce project retrofitting an existing drainage system for a 1,242-acre urbanized basin (2015 update), and the 2014 presentation lists partners including the South Florida Water Management District and the Treasure Coast Resource Conservation and Development Council (2014 presentation).

The 2015 update describes a designed Phase II south of Savannah Road: reestablishing wetlands with clearing, earthwork and plantings, a canoe launching facility and docks, a nature trail with five pedestrian bridges, a pervious paver parking area, fitness equipment along the north walking trail and picnic shelters on both sides of the road (2015 update). The canoe launch, south nature trail, fitness trail and pavilions are all on the county's current amenity list (county Indian Hills page).

Yes; the St. Lucie County Environmental Resources guided nature program calendar lists walks at Indian Hills (Guided Nature Programs page).

The St. Lucie County program page says guided nature programs run October through June, that nature hikes and family programs are free while kayak programs cost $20 per person as posted on October 22, 2026, and that reservations are required with limited space (Guided Nature Programs page). It traces the programs to the $20 million local bond voters approved in 1994 and says more than 11,000 acres have been preserved. Dates for each walk appear on the county calendar rather than here.

For questions about the grounds, the St. Lucie County page points to the City of Fort Pierce at (772) 467-3000 (county Indian Hills page); the city's own contact block lists the City of Fort Pierce at 100 N U.S. Highway 1, Fort Pierce, with the same number (City of Fort Pierce project page). Last verified: October 22, 2026, for the Savannah Road park against the county Indian Hills, preserves and guided program pages, the City of Fort Pierce Indian Hills project page, and the city's 2014 presentation and 2015 update.