Dunedin park location - Becky Nielsen/TPL
I have remarked before on how TPL sometimes loses track of projects after we complete them: problem solved, land conserved, on to the next park or conservation effort.
So it’s always a treat to learn that the public is beginning to enjoy a park we helped to create—that people are, as we like to say, beginning to “walk on our work.”
Exhibit A this morning is Joshia Cephas Weaver Park in Dunedin, Florida. The first I heard of Dunedin was when I edited a 2005 Land&People story about the Pinellas Trail, a 33-mile biking and walking path that runs through that city and that TPL was working to extend. Then we learned that TPL was helping acquire land for a five-acre waterfront park along the trail in Dunedin. The project was on the books for years, as we helped the city apply for and ultimately win state and county grants to acquire the land.
Illustration - Willis S. Blatchley
Now, with the park’s grand opening, we have learned fascinating details about the history of the parkland from a piece by Drew Harwell in the St. Petersburg Times.
After 1913, the property in what was then called Skinner’s Hammock was the winter home of naturalist Dr. Willis Stanley Blatchley, who wrote and illustrated books about the plants and creatures he found there. A historic marker near the park commemorates the 27 winters that Blatchley devoted “to the highly skillful exploration of the world of nature around Dunedin and elsewhere in southern Florida.”
Later the land became the home of country singer and businessman Joshia Cephas Weaver, who was so determined to see the land protected that he offered the city a bargain price for it and ended up with his name on the park.
Josiah Cephus Weaver
Weaver, a country singer reared in the Virginia foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, had moved to Dunedin in 1960 and earned his millions leasing warehouse space. The land on Bayshore Boulevard became his home. He built a long dock into the sound and, in the 1930s-era “Stone House,” opened his first recording studio.
By 2004, when he moved to a mansion in Dunedin Isles, he had rebuffed hundreds of developers pushing to pave over his waterfront land with condo complexes. Instead, he offered it to the city, as one of Dunedin’s last undeveloped vistas of the coast.
“The people should enjoy this land,” he told the Times in 2006. “We don’t need a city with black pavement.”
The city dedicated the park last month, a perfect time for that sort of thing in Florida. A 1920s bungalow has become an art center and new railings have been erected on Weaver’s 725-foot dock. You can go here to view a short video of dignitaries at the park opening, including an ebullient Weaver.
The St. Petersburg Times story continues:
The park is not quite complete. . . . [P]ublic restrooms, picnic pavilions and a floating dock will be built over the next two years . . . .
But on Friday it seemed very much alive. Many of the park’s new parking spaces were filled. Dogwalkers and joggers coursed along the shell walking trail. The spin of cyclists’ freewheels mixed with the putter of choppers. Scents from Eli’s Bar-B-Que, between the park and downtown, wafted on the breeze.
Blatchley marker - Becky Nielsen/TPL
Congratulations to the people of Dunedin, who have saved a place of their past that will give them pleasure long into the future.
Go here for more information about TPL’s work in Florida.
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