Florida State Parks System — Florida

The Florida State Parks system, administered by the Florida Park Service — a division of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) — comprises 175 state parks, 9 state trails, and numerous historic sites encompassing more than 815,000 acres and 101 miles of sandy beach. Formally established by the Florida Legislature on May 13, 1935, the system is the only four-time recipient of the National Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Park and Recreation Management, presented by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration in partnership with the National Recreation and Parks Association — a distinction no other state park system has matched.

In Fiscal Year 2022–23, the system attracted nearly 30 million visitors and generated a direct economic impact of $3.6 billion, according to the Florida State Parks Foundation. That same period, visitor spending contributed over $234 million to the state in sales tax revenues and supported more than 49,000 jobs across Florida. Florida House Resolution 8009 (2025) specifically cited the system as having supported 52,648 jobs in Fiscal Year 2023–24. In 2025, Florida State Parks was again named a finalist for the National Gold Medal Award, its fifth nomination overall.

The Florida State Parks system emerged from the intersection of civic advocacy — driven substantially by women's clubs and conservationists — and the federal New Deal infrastructure programs of the 1930s. The Florida Legislature formally established the Florida Park Service on May 13, 1935, placing it under the State Board of Forestry with an initial annual budget of only $25,000. The first director was C. H. Schaeffer. National Geographic and the Florida Park Service Ranger Association document Highlands Hammock, in Sebring, as the first officially named state park in the system.

The institutional structure evolved in the decades that followed. In 1949, enabling legislation known as the Collins Bill (Chapter 258, Florida Statutes) created the Florida Board of Parks and Historic Memorials as a separate, independent agency, according to the Florida Division of Historical Resources. In 1969, following ratification of a new state constitution, the Florida Legislature reorganized state agencies, merging the Board of Parks and Historic Memorials and the Outdoor Recreational Development Council into the Division of Recreation and Parks within the newly created Department of Natural Resources. In 1993, the Departments of Environmental Regulation and Natural Resources were merged to form the Department of Environmental Protection, which now houses the Division of Recreation and Parks and the Florida Park Service.

Before the Florida Park Service's formal 1935 founding, the Civilian Conservation Corps — created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal — established its first Florida camp near Jacksonville in 1933, according to the Florida Historical Society. CCC enrollees built roads, cabins, bath houses, and picnic pavilions across the state, laying the physical foundation for the park system that the Legislature would formally authorize two years later.

Eight of the system's foundational parks were directly built and equipped by CCC labor: Highlands Hammock, Myakka River, Hillsborough River, Gold Head Branch, O'Leno, Fort Clinch, Torreya, and Florida Caverns State Parks. Many CCC-constructed structures at those parks — including roads, visitor centers, and cabins — remain in active use today. The legacy of this labor is commemorated at a Civilian Conservation Corps Museum located at Highlands Hammock State Park in Sebring. At Myakka River State Park in Sarasota County, the Florida Park Service documents how CCC workers shaped the landscape of one of Florida's oldest and largest parks — now approximately 58,000 acres — in ways that remain visible to the present day.

As of 2024, the Florida Park Service operates 175 state parks, trails, and historic sites encompassing more than 815,000 acres. The system includes 101 miles of beaches, 3,311 campsites, 198 cabins, and 2,275 miles of trails. In calendar year 2023, approximately 1,040 staff and 19,854 volunteers served roughly 28 million visitors across the system, according to DEP.

The Division of Recreation and Parks is also responsible for administering the Florida Circumnavigational Saltwater Paddling Trail and partnerships along the Florida Trail corridor. The Office of Park Planning — one of five bureaus within the Division — evaluates land for acquisition, develops individual park management plans, administers the Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP), and produces annual economic impact assessments.

Several parks within the system document nationally significant natural features. Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna (Jackson County) is the only Florida state park to offer public cave tours, providing access to underground limestone formations. Silver Springs State Park in Marion County — formerly a private tourist attraction purchased by the state — preserves one of the world's largest artesian spring systems and is documented as the site of the first commercially filmed underwater footage. The Florida State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit partner organization, supports local citizen support organizations at individual parks and provides education, communications, and funding support statewide.

The Florida Division of Recreation and Parks organizes its 175 parks into five geographic administrative districts: Northwest (District 1), Northeast (District 2), Central (District 3), Southwest (District 4), and Southeast (District 5). Park character varies substantially across these districts, reflecting Florida's ecological diversity.

The Northwest district, spanning the Panhandle, contains parks defined by white-sand beaches and coastal dunes along the Gulf Coast near Pensacola and the Apalachicola region. The Northeast district encompasses the springs-rich north-central interior — including O'Leno State Park — as well as Fort Clinch State Park near Fernandina Beach on the Atlantic coast and Anastasia State Park near St. Augustine. The Central district protects freshwater springs systems, river corridors, and forested uplands, including Silver Springs State Park in Marion County. The Southwest district covers the greater Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor regions, including Myakka River State Park and a series of Peace River-adjacent parks in Sarasota County and beyond. The Southeast district spans Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties and extends into the Florida Keys, where parks such as Bahia Honda State Park and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park occupy rare natural beach and reef-adjacent environments. The system's geographic breadth means that park ecosystems range from temperate hardwood uplands in the Panhandle to subtropical mangrove forests and coral-proximate habitats in the Keys.

In August 2024, an internal Florida DEP press release — disclosed by a department cartographer — outlined a proposal called the 2024–25 Great Outdoors Initiative, which called for construction of resort-style hotels, golf courses, pickleball courts, and disc golf courses at nine state parks, including Anastasia and Jonathan Dickinson State Parks. The proposal generated immediate and widespread public opposition. Environmental groups and conservation organizations organized protests and public meetings; Governor DeSantis subsequently stated publicly that he had never approved the initiative, as reported by WUSF.

In direct response, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 80 / House Bill 209, the State Park Preservation Act. The Florida House passed the measure 115–0 and the Florida Senate passed it 37–0. Governor DeSantis signed the act into law on May 22, 2025, effective July 1, 2025, according to the Sea Turtle Preservation Society. The act prohibits commercial development — including hotels and golf courses — within state parks, requires public hearings before updates to individual park land management plans, and mandates that DEP submit to the Legislature a cost plan to eliminate the system's deferred maintenance backlog by July 1, 2035. The act also renamed St. Marks River Preserve State Park in Leon and Jefferson counties as Ney Landrum State Park, honoring a former director of the Florida park system, according to The Capitolist.

A subsequent DEP report identified a $759 million deferred maintenance backlog across the system, encompassing aging infrastructure, safety improvements, accessibility upgrades, and modernization of restrooms, trails, utilities, and visitor centers. In their respective FY 2026–27 budget proposals, both the Florida House and Senate included $25 million toward addressing the backlog, according to the Florida Phoenix.

The Florida State Parks system intersects with several other major Florida-wide policy and environmental domains. Its land base of more than 815,000 acres overlaps with the broader conservation land network sustained by the Florida Forever program and earlier P2000 acquisition initiatives administered by DEP's Division of State Lands. Many parks protect portions of Florida's freshwater springs system, directly connecting state park management to ongoing water quality and aquifer management responsibilities distributed across the state's five water management districts.

Parks along Florida's coastline sit at the intersection of state park administration, sea-level rise projections, hurricane risk, and coastal management policy — issues that cut across multiple state agencies and planning frameworks. The CCC-built infrastructure at eight foundational parks links the system to the broader New Deal history of the 1930s, representing a tangible and still-functional artifact of federal public works investment in Florida.

The system's economic output also embeds it within Florida's outdoor recreation and tourism economy. DEP reports that Florida's broader outdoor recreation economy generates over $52 billion statewide annually. The Florida State Parks Foundation notes that many individual parks in small towns function as the primary economic driver for their surrounding rural communities, generating local lodging, restaurant, and retail spending that would not otherwise exist. The 2025 State Park Preservation Act established a legislative precedent addressing the boundary between public conservation land and commercial development — a question with implications for land management policy across Florida's broader public lands portfolio.