My wife and I stopped here on the morning of August 11, 2025. I was vaguely familiar with the history of this place, but being a history buff, I wanted to "walk the terrain" and see what it looked and felt like on foot and to honor and pay my respects to the American soldiers who were killed here nearly 200 years ago.
We arrived at 8:00 am just as the front gate to the park opened. Parking was not a problem since we were the first one's to arrive.
There is a $3 per vehicle park entrance fee here (i.e., honor system envelopes, no ranger at the gate to collect your money or give change) but I am an annual pass holder, so I just wrote my Pass Number on the envelope and hang tag.
The grounds here beautifully maintained and it has an almost surreal feeling to it, particularly in the morning light. Once we parked, a nice lady who lives right outside the gate was walking her dog and greeted us with a friendly smile. She gave us a short rundown of the history of the park and recommended the best route to walk around the park's perimeter, starting with the area where the battle took place. The battle here was actually a guerilla-style ambush and massacre of about 103 US Army Soldiers by the Seminole Indians that took place on December 28, 1935. The area where the battle took place is just inside the front gate off to the left. A 150 yard battlefield trail has white pillars marking the approximate areas where the three company officer's were killed during the battle, as well as reconstructed pine log breastworks that the initial survivors of the attack hastily constructed before they were all slain later in the same afternoon. After the battle, a mass grave of the slain soldiers was dug here by another Army regiment, but several years later, they were all exhumed and moved and re-interred across the State at the National Cemetery in St. Augustine.
There is a fairly complex history of the events that led up to this battle, so I would recommend you look it up on Wikipedia and familiarize yourself with it before you visit here. You'll the necessary gist of it so it'll be more meaningful, particularly if you are on a short timeline and don't have at least 2 hours to stop and read the battlefield placards and spend an hour or two inside the excellent visitor center. You can also read the flyer from the park that I have attached as one of my photos.
When we arrived at the visitor center, two park rangers welcomed us and let us watch a 15 minute intro movie that gives you some historical background and goes into the wave top details on the exact battle action that took place. Afterwords, the rest of the visitor center has about 20 dioramas and displays with very detailed information on the history of the Seminole Wars. There were three of these wars, and the second one began here with the ambush of Major Dade and his men, only two of whom survived the battle.
Most of the details of what happened here would have been lost to the vultures were it not for these two very brave wounded men, who somehow managed to make it all the way back to Tampa on foot with some very serious gunshot and arrowhead wounds.
After we finished the visitor center, we continued to walk along a dirt road along the south side of the park that had several beautiful 300 hundred year old oak trees on either side of it, that are truly a majestic site to see. Once we got back to our vehicle, we noted that there were several very large pavilions and open fields on the north and west side of the park that would be an excellent place to host a church or other association-type picnic.
If you are in the area and have any kind of interest in early American and Florida history, I would definitely spend a few hours here, particularly in the cooler and drier months (Nov - Mar). If you are coming here in the summer months like we did, I'd plan to get here early before it gets too hot and humid. Also pack bug spray and some bottled water. There are also very clean restrooms here, as well as a small...
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