Myers Park in Tallahassee, Florida

Myers Park is both a City of Tallahassee park, established in 1925, and the surrounding Myers Park Historic District, which the city designated a local historic district in 2001.

The 2014 state Myers Park Historic District marker gives the district's bounds as Myers Park on the north and northwest, Country Club Drive on the east, Magnolia Drive on the south, and South Gadsden and South Meridian streets on the west. It says the residential district includes Country Club Estates, parts of Woodland Drives and other subdivisions, a pond, Old Fort Park, Myers Park, and the Capital City Country Club and golf course.

The marker calls the neighborhood reflective of the early 20th century City Beautiful Movement, with a suburban setting and municipal green spaces that create a park-like environment. It lists the people who have lived there as civic and business leaders, Florida Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, state employees, college faculty and administrators, doctors, lawyers and local officials. The city's Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Affairs Department lists its own office at 1201 Myers Park Drive on its aquatics page.

The state marker says the district lies near the remains of Hernando de Soto's 1539 to 1540 winter encampment in the Apalachee capital of Anhaica, and was the site of the 17th century Spanish mission La Purificación de Tama.

Plantation land came next. The marker says the low density neighborhood was carved largely from Lakeland Plantation, owned by the Edward Houston family, and that a portion of that land had belonged to William Pope DuVal, Florida's first territorial governor, whose home was near the modern tennis courts in Myers Park. Other acreage came from the Flavius and Lula Coles farm, whose late 19th century house still stands on Oakland Avenue in the Tallahassee district.

Myers Park also borders a Black neighborhood erased by later development. The City of Tallahassee neighborhood heritage page says that during the late 19th and early 20th centuries the area just east of downtown Tallahassee and west of Myers Park Drive was an African American community called Smokey Hollow, and that plans for the Department of Transportation building and the expansion of Apalachee Parkway encroached on it in the 1950s. By 1978, the page says, only two houses remained, one of them John Riley's.

Twentieth century development began in 1926 in Country Club Estates on the former Houston plantation, a year after the green space of Myers Park was established.

The state marker describes Country Club Estates as a planned suburb with curvilinear streets and irregular lot shapes, north of Palmer Avenue and between South Meridian Street and Golf Terrace Drive, which overlooked a nine-hole golf course. Myers Park and the golf course were advertised as permanent assets, and the developer gave free lots to the first four persons who agreed to build houses costing at least $5,000.

The marker names two of the first four builders, a state chemist and landscape enthusiast and a former mayor and state senator who was president of the Capital City First National Bank. It says early residents remembered living at the edge of the city, out in the country in the woods, with an easy commute to downtown Tallahassee and to the Florida State College for Women, now Florida State University.

The park holds the city's Wade Wehunt Pool at 1206 Myers Park Drive and three lighted hard tennis courts open for free walk-in play.

The city's tennis court page lists the Myers Park Tennis Courts on Myers Park Drive with 3 lighted hard courts and says all lighted courts are open sunrise to 11 p.m. Its spring sports page says Tallahassee Fast Pitch Softball Association practices and games take place at Tom Brown and Myers parks. The aquatics page lists Wade Wehunt Pool at 1206 Myers Park Dr., phone 850-891-3985, with lane reservations through the hotline at 850-891-4903.

The city notes that the Myers Park pool schedule depends on available staffing and that pool space may be limited from Friday to Sunday because of lifeguard training classes. The reserved-lane and multi-visit fees are shared with the Jack McLean and Trousdell aquatics centers; only the daily flex child rate differs, at $1.00 at Wade Wehunt against $4.50 at the other two.

The City of Tallahassee announced a 100th anniversary celebration for Myers Park on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025, built around its annual Arbor Day tree planting.

In a January 17, 2025 news release, the city said the event at Myers Park, 1206 Myers Park Drive, would start at 9 a.m. with family friendly activities, sweet treats and tennis demonstrations, and that volunteers would help plant a diverse mix of 65 trees, including oaks, magnolias and maple, rain or shine, with no registration needed. The release noted that the City of Tallahassee and Leon County partner each year to celebrate Arbor Day, and pointed residents to the city's 100 parks.

The release describes the planting as a way to strengthen the historic Myers Park's natural habitat. It gave the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Affairs Department number, 850-891-3866, for questions. The date in this guide is the one the city announced; the centennial falls 100 years after the 1925 founding date on the state marker.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the Myers Park Historic District marker record and five City of Tallahassee pages: aquatics, tennis courts, spring sports, neighborhood heritage and the January 2025 centennial release.