Savannas Preserve State Park

Savannas Preserve State Park in Port St. Lucie is open 8 a.m. to sunset every day of the year, and Florida State Parks posts a $3 per vehicle fee, paid cashless.

The park's Florida State Parks page lists the main entrance at 2541 S.E. Walton Road, Port St. Lucie 34952, and the phone as 772-398-2779 (Florida State Parks, Savannas Preserve). Entry is cashless: visitors pay online by scanning the QR code on the park entry sign or through the parks online store.

The park page lists bicycling, birding, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, paddling, picnicking and wildlife viewing, with a visitor center, a canoe and kayak launch, an equestrian trail, picnic pavilions, restrooms and pets among its amenities (Florida State Parks, experiences and amenities). The page also posts current closure notices, so the park number, 772-398-2779, is worth a call before driving out.

The White, Yellow and Blue trails at Savannas Preserve State Park start from the canoe launch inside the Walton Road main entrance, and the park page also names trailheads and launches on Jensen Beach Boulevard, at Hawks Bluff and at Evans Creek.

The park page gives the White trail as 5 miles, the Yellow Trail as 1 mile and the Blue Trail as 2 miles, with their trailhead reached by driving 0.7 miles down the unpaved Canoe Launch Road, on the left inside the main entrance gate, and parking at the canoe launch (Florida State Parks, Savannas Preserve). The same page names the Jensen Beach Boulevard day use area, the Hawks Bluff trail and the Evans Creek Canoe Launch, and it posts current closures, so the park number, 772-398-2779, is the line to check.

The 2017 management plan describes the full Savannas trail layout (Savannas Preserve unit management plan). About 17.5 miles of shared-use trail for hiking, biking and horses run between Walton Road and Easy Street, just north of the FPL power line corridor, with hikers and cyclists starting from the Environmental Education Center parking area and riders using the equestrian trailhead off Scenic Park Drive. Hawk's Bluff Trail, in the southern part of the park off Savanna Road, is 0.75 miles long, with parking limited to the road right of way, and the Jensen Beach Trailhead has gravel parking, restrooms and a picnic shelter.

Savannas Preserve State Park is a 6,877 acre state park off Walton Road in Port St. Lucie, while the county's Savannas Recreation Area, a 550 acre campground and preserve, sits on Midway Road in Fort Pierce.

St. Lucie County describes its Savannas Recreation Area at 1400 E. Midway Road, Fort Pierce, as a 550-acre preserve protecting one of the last remaining freshwater savanna ecosystems along Florida's East Coast, with camping, fishing piers, kayak rentals and a dog park, reached at 772-464-7855 (St. Lucie County, Savannas Recreation Area). The state park is managed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Recreation and Parks, and its management plan classifies it as a preserve, a unit where preservation and enhancement of natural conditions is all important (Savannas Preserve State Park plan).

The state park's fee and hours come from Florida State Parks; camping rates and rules at the county site are covered in the St. Lucie County Savannas Recreation Area guide.

The park protects what its plan calls the last relatively undisturbed example of coastal freshwater basin marsh in southeastern Florida, plus scrub ridge and the North Fork of the St. Lucie River corridor.

The 2017 plan splits Savannas Preserve State Park into two main properties: the Savannas property, entirely east of U.S. Highway 1, containing the basin marsh, and the North Fork property, entirely west of U.S. 1, containing the North Fork of the St. Lucie River (Savannas Preserve unit management plan). The park lies within St. Lucie and Martin counties and partly inside the City of Port St. Lucie, and the plan says Stuart and Ft. Pierce are within five miles. The plan describes the marsh as the largest, most ecologically intact stretch of freshwater marsh in southeast Florida, representative of the marsh that once covered much of the region before rapid urbanization.

Rare plants and animals are part of the reason the Savannas park exists. The plan names the fragrant prickly apple cactus, Savannas mint, four-petal pawpaw and the federally endangered Florida scrub-jay among the species it shelters (plan, park significance). The Florida State Parks page sums the landscape up as a representative sample of the basin marsh that extended throughout South Florida before rapid suburban growth (Florida State Parks).

The North Fork property doubles as a launch point. FDEP lists Savannas Preserve State Park among the parking and boat access points for the North Fork, St. Lucie Aquatic Preserve (FDEP, North Fork, St. Lucie Aquatic Preserve), and the North Fork preserve guide covers that river in detail.

The state's first Savannas purchase came on April 25, 1977, when the Trustees took title to a 9.85 acre St. Lucie County property using Environmentally Endangered Lands funds.

Since that first purchase the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund has added parcels through several state programs, including the Land Acquisition Trust Fund, Conservation and Recreation Lands, Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever, plus a donation (Savannas Preserve plan, acquisition history). A portion of the park, 241 acres of the North Fork property, was acquired jointly with the South Florida Water Management District. The Trustees and the district hold fee simple title, and the Division of Recreation and Parks manages the Savannas park under three leases, including Lease No. 3996 for the Savannas portion and Lease No. 4178 for the North Fork portion.

The park land also hosts a state office for the lagoon. The Indian River Lagoon Aquatic Preserves plan puts its field office headquarters at 3300 Lewis Street in Ft. Pierce, on land the state park manages where Five Mile and Ten Mile creeks meet before reaching the North Fork preserve (IRL Aquatic Preserves System Management Plan).

Florida State Parks says that by 1895 the Savannas area of the Treasure Coast was known as the Pineapple Capital of the World, and the park's history largely revolved around pineapple farming.

The park page ties the history of the Savannas, and of the surrounding Treasure Coast, to the pineapple farming industry (Florida State Parks, history). The management plan fills in the picture: in the late 1800s and early 1900s large pineapple plantations stretched across the Atlantic Coastal Ridge on the eastern edge of the Savannas, including Edenlawn Plantation, which later became a commercial nursery and then a tourist resort by the mid twentieth century (Savannas Preserve plan, cultural resources). Some scrub in the park was cleared for those plantations.

Earlier, the plan says, the Ais populated the area around the Indian River between the St. Lucie Inlet and Cape Canaveral until the middle 1700s, when native populations declined through disease, conflict and enslavement by European settlers (plan, past uses). The Savannas park keeps objects from the pineapple era in a pineapple packing house exhibit inside the Environmental Education Center, which the plan places about 2 miles east of U.S. 1 on Walton Road.

Last verified: October 22, 2026, by reading the Florida State Parks Savannas page, the 2017 Savannas plan, the lagoon preserves plan and the county Savannas Recreation Area and FDEP North Fork pages again for this state park guide.