Find Old Florida at Hernando Beach

One of the conundrums of naming a place is that people DO expect to find what’s in a name: Silver Springs, for instance, or White Springs, or Lake City … logically, those landforms should exist in those towns, and they do. Florida's Hernando Beach is a different animal.

I remember after a visit in the 1960s to Weeki Wachee going in search of a beach and being disappointed at a rough spit of land with sand and pine trees on the Gulf, down at the end of SR 50. But Hernando Beach, I think, was a marketing ploy by a developer who carved canals out of estuary and sold lots at sea level. Shoal Line Road is lined with some fine restaurants, but this is a mostly residential area to the west of SR 19.

You can’t see the Gulf of Mexico from Hernando Beach, even from the top of the observation tower at Jenkins Creek, but you can smell the salt air and drive along stretches of highway in the middle of a salt marsh. Pedersen Park at Jenkins Creek is a pretty little place for fishing or swimming, with picnic tables and pavilions and a man-made beach along a crystalline palm-lined creek, a slice of Old Florida at its finest. Across the street. drop a line off the boardwalk and fish in the estuary, or drop your boat in and putter off to the not-so-distant but still out of reach Gulf of Mexico.

Explore Florida's backroads. You'll find Linda Pedersen Park at 6400 Shoal Line Blvd, Spring Hill, FL 34607. Open daily sunrise to sunset; admission is free.

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