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Hillsborough River State Park

January 29, 2005

Our first camp of 2005 was a nice relaxing start to the new year. We drove to Hillsborough River State Park which is just a little northeast of Tampa in a town called Thonotosassa. It's a large park with plenty of campsites for RV's as well as tents and pop-ups. We were very lucky and got one of the more secluded campsites. Most sites are quite close to one another and there is little to no foliage between the sites. Some campers were just a couple of feet away from their neighbors. But the campground was very quiet, even with many of the sites occupied.

This park offers a huge swimming pool - the first one we've seen at a State Park. It also has a little café and a store that rents canoes and bicycles, and a nice playground for kids. They have an interesting interpretive center with artifacts from the area and on Saturday nights they show a movie at the Recreation Hall. There are also a number of nice hiking trails anywhere from 1 mile to over 3 miles depending on how energetic you're feeling.

We saw people fishing in the river, and we also found a series of small bridges along the hiking trails. The most interesting one was a suspension bridge which sways a bit as you cross it. There are also a few small rapids along the river which is a highly unusual sight in Florida.

The most interesting part of the weekend was our tour of Fort Foster. It is a reconstructed fort that was originally built and manned during the second Seminole War. It was built to protect the bridge over the Hillsborough River so that supplies, sent by wagons, could be safely received without the threat of ambush by the Indians. There were over 300 soldiers stationed there in 1836 but because of disease, sickness, Indian raids, and deserters, the fort was abandoned six months later. It was reoccupied later and in the spring of 1838 General Zachary Taylor took over command. The fort was one of many that decimated the Seminole nation, leaving only a few hundred Indians left in all of Florida. 1,400 army soldiers died in the seven years of the war but only 328 were killed in action. Most of the rest succumbed to disease.

On the Halpern rating scale, I would give this park a "3.5" There are plenty of things to do and see but the campsites are a bit cramped for out taste.

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