Leaving Cypress Creek behind, the trail ascends up over the bluff through a switchback to return to the sand pine forest. After you cross a small bridge, the forest opens, and you’re back in open scrub, out in the bright sunshine, among a broad open sea of scrub palmetto. A pileated woodpecker beats a rhythm against a distant snag as you pass through alternating open scrub and islands of oaks. Taller sand post oaks, laurel oaks, and bracken fern indicate the habitat’s shift to sandhill, where oaks dominate and moister conditions make it possible for the bracken to flourish.
After 2.4 miles, you reach the blue-blazed 0.2-mile side trail to the primitive campsite. Even if you’re not spending the night, you can take a break at the picnic table. Get a permit from the park office in advance if you plan to camp. There is no water, so you must carry in what you need or filter it at Cypress Creek on the way here. The campsite is surrounded by an oak hammock. If you take this side trip, add 0.4 mile to your overall mileage.
Scrub forest
Passing the campsite, the trail continues into an oak scrub, passing briefly under a stand of spreading live oaks. As a radio tower looms in the distance, the trail starts curving left, beginning its route toward the river. The habitat changes to a wet pine flatwoods; damp indentations fill with swamp lilies. After the trail follows a fence line within sight of a subdivision, it swings farther left. Stick with the yellow-blazed trail as it returns to a scrub habitat along the western boundary of the park.
At 3.3 miles, you cross a long boardwalk over a slow-flowing tannic creek. You’ve finished your trek through the scrub and pine flatwoods, and are entering the hardwood forests along the Little Manatee River, where cabbage palms and laurel oaks dominate. Not far beyond the bridge, the trail makes an abrupt left—watch the blazes! It’s easy to miss this one, as it seems like the trail continues straight ahead. As you walk through the forest, the trail crosses bridges over small channels that feed down into the river. You’ll walk along the edges of small marshy ponds, some thick with swamp lilies, others coated with a slimy-looking surface of duckweed. As you approach a tall slash pine in the trail, look for an odd oak tree. The trunk fell over at some point early in the tree’s development, leaving the branches to grow straight up—looking like mature trees sprouting out of a long log.
View of the Little Manatee River from its bluffs
As the trail emerges on a sand bluff, you get a sweeping view of a horseshoe bend in the Little Manatee River. Reaching this point at 3.7 miles, the trail swings left and follows the river upstream for most of the remainder of the hike. Although it jogs around numerous side channels of the river, the trail always returns to the sandy bluffs along the river’s edge. Two canoes drift by. It’s a gentle paddle, a three-hour trip from the landing just off US 301 on the south side of the river.
The trail then turns sharply left away from the river to skirt a deep floodplain inlet, broadening as it rises from a marshy area into a forest of sweetgum, water oaks, and laurel oaks. Watch for pineapple-sized bromeliads in the trees, particularly when you come up to a large red cedar at 4.3 miles. Soon after, you return to the river’s edge, crossing a series of bridges spanning a floodplain channel next to the river. Lilies grow in the thick mud. After you cross another bridge, the trail follows a narrow strip between the river and its floodplain forest, reaching an area where cabbage palms dominate the landscape.
Climbing up a steep bluff, the trail turns to follow Cypress Creek upstream. Look to the right to see where the creek enters the Little Manatee River. The trail sticks to the rugged bluff until it drops to a broad bridge over the creek. This is your last chance to savor this beautiful waterway, so take a moment at the bench. The blue-blazed cross-trail joins in here at 4.8 miles. The yellow blazes swing downstream along Cypress Creek, veering left as the trail winds back through the forest. One palm curves low along the forest floor.
By 5.5 miles, you reach a scenic stretch on the river bluffs, with nice views upstream. The trail clambers up and down little slopes, skirting floodplain forests in old side channels of the river. Pignut hickories dominate the forest. The trail passes through a thicket of wild balsam apple. You briefly emerge back onto the river bluff, hearing the sound of traffic from US 301. Leaving the river, the trail ducks into a scrub oak forest then turns to cross a bridge, returning to the hickory-dominated forest. Look for a beaten path to the right. It leads to a secluded beach at river level. Wild citrus hangs overhead.
After zigzagging along the soft bluffs, you cross a tall bridge over a deep side channel that weaves its way to the river, when it’s running at all. Just past it is Marker 2. The trail swings left, where saw palmettos lift their trunks 5 feet and more in the air. The trail emerges into the sunshine in a meadow broken up by smaller live oaks and slash pine. Growing in heaping mounds, smilax provides the ground cover. Your last glimpse of the river is where the wide mowed trail continues through the meadow, where raspberries and daisies fight for space.
After you cross the small bridge in the meadow, the trail heads toward a line of slash pines, then jogs beneath the cool shade of a large live oak. Turning left, you see an old structure in the woods before you walk down a tall corridor of slash pine into an oak hammock. Ferns and sweetbay magnolia appear. After 6.3 miles, you’ve reached the beginning of the loop. Turn right to exit, walking across the boardwalks through the ferns on the way back to the parking area. When you return to your car, you’ve completed a 6.5-mile hike.
OTHER HIKING OPTIONS
1. Cypress Creek Loop. Use the blue-blazed cross-trail to Cypress Creek to make a very scenic 3-mile loop, following the above directions up to the cross-trail and back from the bench at Cypress Creek. The cross-trail connector is 0.2 mile long and very scenic.
2. River Trek. Walk the river side of the loop by following the loop counterclockwise out along the bluffs up to 2.5 miles. When the trail seems to be leaving the river, turn around and either come back the same way, or use the cross-trail to come back to the trailhead along the north side of the loop for a 5-mile hike.
3. Oxbow Nature Trail/Sand Pine Trail. From either the main parking area (27.6748, -82.3786) on the south side of the river, or the parking area at the steps to the river (27.6757, -82.3756) inside Little Manatee River State Park, use the Sand Pine Trail to access the Oxbow Nature Trail (27.6767, -82.3790), a 0.6-mile interpretive loop along an oxbow in the river. Using both trails, ramble several miles between picnic area, river steps, and campground. Bikes are welcome on the Sand Pine Trail.
CAMPING AND LODGING
Little Manatee River State Park (1-800-326-3521, floridastateparks.reserveamerica.com)
Canoe Outpost Little Manatee River, 18001 US 301 S, Wimauma, FL 33598 (813-634-2228, thecanoeoutpost.com)
Comfort Inn, 718 Cypress Village Boulevard, Sun City Center, FL 33573 (813-633-3318, choicehotels.com)
Maritime hammock at Ponce Preserve
VII.
ATLANTIC
COAST
Tiger Bay State Forest
Total distance: 4.1 miles in two trails.
Hiking time: 1.5–2 hours
Difficulty: Easy to moderate
Usage: Free at Pershing Highway. $2 per person fee at Indian Lake Recreation Area. Open sunrise to sunset. Leashed pets welcome.
Trailhead GPS Coordinates: 29.1321, -81.1530 (Pershing Highway), 29.1660, -81.1622 (Buncombe Hill)
Contact Information: Tiger Bay State Forest, 4316 W International Speedway Boulevard, Daytona Beach, FL 32124 (386-985-7815, freshfromflorida.com)
In a land where speed rules, it’s refreshing to walk at a slow pace, pausing to smell the wild roses, pondering the choices of butterflies as they flutter from purple asters to sandhill milkweed, and peering across the marshes to figure out where the frog croaks are coming from. Just up the road from the roaring NASCAR engines at Daytona International Speedway, off International Speedway Boulevard, Tiger Bay State Forest protects 27,395 acres along the Tomoka River watershed. In Florida, a bay is an area where w
ater collects—including a swamp forest such as Tiger Bay, vast and impenetrable except along ancient ridges that rise above the tannic waters. Two hiking trails showcase wildly different aspects of this state forest stretching between Deland and Daytona Beach. Sample the swamps of Tiger Bay without getting your feet wet with a hike along the Pershing Highway Interpretive Trail, then head up to Rima Ridge for a walk on the dry side of the forest on the Buncombe Hill Hiking Trail.
GETTING THERE
From exit 261B on I-95, follow US 92 (International Speedway Boulevard) west for 4.3 miles to the light at Indian Lake Road. To access the small trailhead for the Pershing Highway Interpretive Trail, you’ll need to continue past the light at Indian Lake Road for another mile and look for a turnout on the left; using the turnout, make a U-turn back onto the eastbound side of US92, and the brown sign marking the trailhead will be on the right. Parking here is limited to just a couple of cars.
THE HIKES
Pershing Highway Interpretive Trail
Starting at a very small trailhead off US 92, this walk is paved, but not in the usual sense. This is a stroll into the past on a surface laid down more than a century ago. In 1903, the Ormond Hotel encouraged early auto owners to gather for a timed racing event along hardpacked Ormond Beach, the world’s first automobile time trials. Racing became a regular event in the winter months along the stretch of sand from Ormond to Ponce Inlet. Drivers started finding their way south overland, not an easy task with so few roads—visitors came to Florida by boat in those days. The first driver to make it from New York City to Daytona, as it was known then, arrived in 1907, following the Old Kings Road, an unpaved military trail dating back two centuries. Within the next decade, more trails through this densely wooded Florida coast were improved, usually by widening and grading, to increase automobile access to the region.
Century-old bricks of Pershing Highway
It was 1917 when work began on a link between these north-south roads and the Volusia County seat of Deland, which sat not far from the St. Johns River. Named for World War I General John J. Pershing, the Pershing Highway was built across Tiger Bay, curving through extensive marshes, cypress strands, and bayheads. In the heart of the swamp, the 8-foot-wide brick highway was an engineering marvel of its time. It became part of what was later known as the Pershing Triangle, a 63-mile network of roads connecting Deland with Orange City and New Smyrna Beach. And here is a piece of that road, standing the test of time. It stretches off to the horizon into the forest.
When you start your walk, notice that the brick surface is edged by what we know as Chattahoochee stone, a conglomerate of pebbles. Eight feet just wasn’t wide enough once traffic picked up, so the brick highway was widened to two narrow lanes by adding this edging, likely in the 1920s. This addition probably helped keep the bricks in place over the decades. Between the brick and the stone, you can’t get lost on this hike. Numerous benches and markers at every 0.25 mile let you easily keep track of your walk. Dayflowers bloom along the grassy sides. Crossing an old culvert over an inky waterway that might be home to an alligator, the road curves gently south around a bend, edged by cabbage palms. The next straightaway is hemmed in by marsh, with red maple resplendent in its red leaves in winter, and Virginia willow leaning out over the pebbled shoulder. Pines on the south side of the road speak to higher ground.
Indian Lake
As the highway curves north towards US 92, you come to the end of the interpretive trail after a mile along the bricks. After World War II, it was time to build a better highway. US 92 opened between Deland and Daytona Beach in 1947, and the Pershing Highway was forgotten, reclaimed by the lush swamp forest. A portion of this highway (marked on maps as Old Daytona Beach) was still in evidence north of US 92, near Tiger Bay State Forest headquarters, but this piece vanished from memory until 1998, when it was exposed again by the extensive wildfires that burned across the dried-out swamp during one of Florida’s worst droughts. By 2011, a group of Daytona Beach community leaders, along with Scout troops, helped clear this remaining segment of the highway so it could be enjoyed on foot. When you reach the end, turn around and retrace your steps back to the trailhead for a 2-mile round-trip.
After you’ve visited this trail, drive eastbound on US 92 to Indian Lake Road and turn left at the light. Follow the road through a complex of government buildings. The pavement ends where the state forest begins. Sign in at the kiosk and pick up a map. Continue down the dirt road, following the signs to Indian Lake Recreation Area (29.1660, -81.1622).
Buncombe Hill Hiking Trail
Indian Lake Recreation Area is a beauty spot, so it wasn’t a surprise to see the new kiosk about its history. What did surprise us was confirmation of the location of the earliest known Boy Scout camp in the Central Florida Council. Photographs show Scouts and their leaders in uniform in the late 1920s, gathered around a rustic lodge with 66-acre Indian Lake in the background; the Scouts are swimming, eating, and posed with a war canoe. This site was also used as a logging camp with a sawmill, as loggers harvested the ancient cypress of Tiger Bay and the tall longleaf pines in the uplands. Commercial use continued until this land was purchased in 1994 to become a state forest.
The trail begins at a prominent kiosk across from the picnic area and iron ranger. Pick up a map at the kiosk. The loop is blazed mint green with green markers that correspond to the interpretive brochure and is best hiked in the suggested direction. The trail starts out as a wide path edged by the sand pine scrub. Although you walk along the edge of a sandhill habitat, sand pines have replaced longleaf as the dominant pine, thanks to aggressive logging of the original forest. As the path narrows, you pass Marker 2, calling your attention to the scrub. Rusty lyonia and silk bay rise from the bright white sand.
At a double blaze, enter an oak hammock, where a split oak splays across the trail. The trail reaches a T intersection. Turn left. Sand live oaks provide a canopy strung with streamers of Spanish moss. Saw palmetto lines the trail corridor. Tall sand pines are interspersed throughout the oaks. The footpath winds through this picturesque forest until Marker 3, where there is a shift in habitat. Here, slash pines were planted by the timber company that owned this forest in the 1990s. While maturing, they stand in rows. Through the empty spaces between them, peek at swamp-loving loblolly bays growing along the marshy rim of Indian Lake.
Rows of slash pine yield to oak hammock after Marker 4, and then you enter the scrub again. This one is different. While the sand pines are everywhere, the understory is taken over by a uniquely Florida landscape, a rosemary scrub. This is a relatively rare habitat, so it’s nice to see a healthy one surrounding Marker 6, stretching off in several directions as the understory of this portion of the scrub. These domed woody shrubs, some up to 6 feet tall and almost as wide, are reminiscent of sagebrush. Despite its name, Florida rosemary is not related to the edible herb rosemary, which is in the mint family. To survive in the scrub, a rosemary bush releases a natural herbicide into the sand that inhibit the growth of its seedlings and other plants. That is why the rosemary bushes are so neatly spaced apart. The chemical is stripped from the soil during a fire, so seedlings can then take root.
After 0.5 mile of hiking, you pass Marker 7 at a clump of Yucca filamentosa, a native shrub in the same family as agave and Joshua trees. Cladonia lichens rise from a patch of bright white sand nearby. The forest is a mix of natural habitat and planted pines, the open understory here evoking the sandhill that once dominated Rima Ridge. The ridge is an old dune line, running north-south and forming an island of high ground between Bennett Swamp and Tiger Bay. Watch for orange sand, thrown across the white forest floor from the diggings of gopher tortoises. As the habitat shifts to scrubby flatwoods, the trail is surrounded by a massive blueberry patch—a good place to visit in April, when the berries are ripe. In a sand pine forest, a thick carpet of pine needles is underfoot as you pass a bench. The trees are small and slender, packed tightly together, resembling a bamboo grove.
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p; Rosemary scrub at Marker 6
Making a sharp left onto a forest road, you enter a clearing, the site of the Buncombe Hill/Stillman Turpentine Camp at Marker 10. Bedframes, crockery, and the shards of broken Herty cups were on the forest floor when we hiked this trail for the first edition of this guidebook. Now nothing is in evidence, although the echoes of history remain. Booming just after the Civil War, turpentine processing was the state’s second largest industry after logging, and its most infamous, since early turpentine camps relied on cheap labor leased from state prisons in a system that was badly abused. The state’s last turpentine camp closed in 1949.
Follow the trail out of the camp, where it goes through an old gate before crossing Rima Ridge Road after 1 mile. It turns right and parallels the road southbound through sandhill forest, which yields to planted pines as you cross to the west side of Rima Ridge Road at FR 706. Clusters of shiny blueberry grow atop the dense mat of pine needles on the forest floor. Past Marker 8, the forest feels more natural and has clumps of wiregrass. In the fall, feathery purple spikes of blooming blazing star attract many varieties of butterflies, including the black swallowtail, the tiger swallowtail, and the southern dogface. Just past the next bench—which sits at a junction with an abandoned forest road—you see Marker 12, beyond the blueberries it indicates.
50 Hikes in Central Florida Page 28
