The Vista: An American Hiking Society Blog

February 19, 2007

Right now, you can walk along the state's footpath that connects cypress swamp in South Florida to grassy hills north of Orlando and extends to beaches of the state's far western Panhandle.

It's the 40-year-old Florida National Scenic Trail, crossing nearly 1,500 miles of wild lands on public or other conservation property. There are only seven other such federally designated trails in the country, including the renowned Appalachian Trail.

But true to life in Florida, the natural trail is interrupted by scenes of human development. On nearly a fourth of the distance, hikers are forced out of forests and sandhills to trek along highways, some rural and others congested.

Trail advocates say now is the time to move those 361 remaining miles onto protected lands before Florida's rapid development makes that impossible.

"The easy part has been done," said Pete Durnell, an Osceola County resident and a vice president of the Florida Trail Association. "Now it's the hard parts we have to get done."

One way to get hikers off road shoulders and into the woods is by encouraging private landowners to donate corridors through wild lands.

A pretty penny

Another option is government acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands, such as the state-led purchase last year of wilderness along the St. Johns River in Orange and Seminole counties. It wasn't cheap.

The 4,569-acre Joshua Creek Conservation Area cost $50 million, a figure boosted by dramatic spikes in real-estate prices in recent years.

But getting that property, mostly wetlands that feed a number of creeks, means hikers won't have to trudge along 10 miles of Fort Christmas Road and instead will get to explore about 8 miles of healthy forest seen by relatively few people so far.

The Florida National Scenic Trail is a long, narrow park. Caretakers include the National Forest Service and the Florida Trail Association.

The trail hitchhikes across an impressive variety of properties, including a bombing range, university property, parcels that belong to cities, counties and water-management districts, state forests, three national forests -- the Ocala, Osceola and Apalachicola -- and many more.

Those areas are all protected from development.

"We go through every significant type of public land with the exception of prisons," said Kent Wimmer, who heads trail management and building for the Florida Trail Association, which relies on volunteers, grants and donations.

It has taken years to assemble all the pieces.

The trail was born in 1964, after South Florida resident Jim Kern returned from a 40-mile trek with his brother on the Appalachian Trail.

"I got back home, and the idea of a long trail just leaped into my mind," said Kern, a founder of the American Hiking Society and other outdoor pursuits, and now a St. Augustine resident.

70-mile stretch

He started the Florida Trail Association, which assembled volunteers two years later to carve out 26 miles of route through the Ocala National Forest. The forest, at the northern edge of the Orlando metro area, now contains an unbroken 70-mile segment.

In 1983, Congress declared Florida's hiking path a scenic trail, which brings money and help in running the trail system from the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior.

Kern no longer has an active part in extending the trail but thinks its backers should take a more aggressive role in putting together the last pieces before it's too late.

By that, he means state condemnation of parcels in a process similar to purchase of lands for building roads. That's a step rarely taken in Florida to acquire green space.