Discover This: Venice Area Parks

Venice is a beautiful seaside town on the Florida Gulf Coast. Experience natural Florida habitats such as scrubby and pine flatwoods, mangrove islands, and estuarine rivers.  Learn more about eight area parks:

Historic Spanish Point

Activities: Historic tours, sunset concerts,
About: Part historical site, part archaeological venue and part environmental preserve, Historic Spanish Point opened in 1982 and now acts as a living museum. Fronting Little Sarasota Bay, the park offers a 30-acre glimpse into the area's beginnings, with outdoor trails the wind among exhibits and hands-on activities looking at life for the Native Americans who first lived on the land, telling the tales of the first European settlers to reach the area, the science and studies behind the park, the wildlife and habitats here and more.

Oscar Scherer State Park

Activities: Canoeing/kayaking, hiking, biking, swimming, wildlife viewing, picnicking, camping.
About: The 1,381-acre Oscar Scherer State Park bills itself as one of the best places in the area to view the Florida scrub jay, an endangered bird that thrives only in a rapidly vanishing habitat. If that isn't enough to entice visitors, the park also offers 15 miles of natural trails for hiking, a tidal blackwater stream for paddling, a lake for swimming, areas for freshwater and saltwater fishing, picnic pavilions, a butterfly garden, and more, including access to the rails-to-trails Legacy Trail.

Knight Trail park & Outdoor Shooting Complex

Activities: Hiking, camping, archery, picnicking; trap, skeet, sporting clays, pistol and rifle shooting
About: Spilling across 271 acres east of Interstate 75, Knight Trail Park caters primarily to visitors eager to test and hone their skills with firearms, as well as archers looking for a little practice or sporting time. The grounds hold a variety of ranges, from trap fields to full sporting clay courses, with distances from 12 to 100 yards. A 50-acre tract of the park hosts an archery club, with regular activities for members and free introductory lessons for anyone interested. Hiking trails and picnic areas round out the experience.

Jelks Preserve

Activities: Canoeing/kayaking, paddleboarding, hiking, birding, wildlife watching, fishing, picnicking.
About: Alligators and ospreys, bald eagles and gopher tortoises, swallow-tailed kites and swallowtail butterflies are among the natural stars at Jelks Preserve, a 614-acre county-run park east of Venice. The park features eight miles of unpaved trails, allowing visitors to meander through an assortment of flatwoods, hammocks and wetlands. At three points, each in the northeastern stretch of the park, the trails roll out to the Myakka River, officially designated a Wild and Scenic River by Florida lawmakers in 1985. Follow one of the trails or simply paddle along the river and enjoy unspoiled views of natural Florida, with the 6,400-acre Deer Prairie Creek Preserve the main neighbor to the east.

Venice Beach

Activities: Swimming, diving/snorkeling, beach-combing, artifact/fossil hunting, fishing, volleyball, picnicking.
About: Sure, the sugar-white sands and tranquil waters of Venice Beach provide plenty enough incentive to spend a day there. The Gulf of Mexico offers ample allure to those who would cast a fishing line into the Gulf of Mexico. A nearby, offshore reef even attracts divers and snorkelers. But the sands here hold another treasure: shark's teeth – fossil and otherwise. The area has become a destination for those seeking out fossils and fragments of marine creatures, ancient and modern, with the city earning the designation as "Shark's Tooth Capital of the World" and the area hosting an annual Shark Tooth's Festival.

Caspersen Beach

Activities: Swimming, beach-combing, canoeing/kayaking (with launch), paddleboarding, fishing, wildlife watching, hiking.
About: Much like Venice Beach, its neighbor to the north, Caspersen Beach offers ample opportunity to scour the sands for shark's teeth relics and fossils. It also has the same sugar-white sands and tranquil waters of the Gulf of Mexico, perfect for easy swimming or a little fishing. But Caspersen also serves up a network of nature trails and boardwalks that allow visitors to roam through marshes and mangroves, into tidal flats and onto sand dunes, all the better to get a peek at native wildlife and natural Florida.

Shamrock Park and Nature Center

Activities: Hiking, biking, birding, butterfly garden, basketball, tennis, picnicking.
About: Nestled between the Intracoastal Waterway and sprawls of residential communities, Shamrock Park and Nature Center is one of the few remaining areas of scrub habitat in the area. The park offers visitors a view of native populations of scrub jays and gopher tortoises, from a network of unpaved trails and a 1.2-mile paved trail through the park's core, which links with the rails-to-trails Legacy Trail, via the Venetian Waterway Trail. A vast playground, adjacent to a nature center, offers a place for children to burn off energy.

Indian Mound Park

Activities: Historic site, canoeing/kayaking, paddleboarding, hiking, birding, fishing, picnicking.
About: Featured on the Trail of Florida's Indian Heritage, Indian Mound Park in southern Sarasota County is a rarity for the area, one of the few spots affording a look at how early inhabitants lived and shaped the landscape. Native peoples were drawn to the site – also known as Paulsen Point – for its wealth of resources, both on the land and in the bay. Today, visitors can stand on the same ground to better understand the site's importance. Additionally, the site offers access to a boat ramp and canoe/kayak launch, as well as a picnic shelter.