Cedar Point
9023 Cedar Point Road
Jacksonville, Florida 32218
Cedar Point is one of four parcels of land within Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve that is actually owned by the National Park Service (not counting the salt marsh). It is a natural area with hiking trails, a boat ramp, a few dilapidated picnic tables, and what I call a fancy outhouse, which is a pit toilet housed in a permanent building versus the plastic, portable toilets common at construction sites.
When arriving at Cedar Point along Cedar Point Road, stay straight until the road ends to get to the parking lot for the trails. Take a left just before the road ends to get to the boat ramp and restroom. You can still get to the trails from the boat ramp area via a connector trail that comes out at the hiking trail parking lot.
HIKING TRAILS
There are two hiking trails at Cedar Point: the Cedar Point Loop Trail and the Pinelands Trail. Only the Cedar Point Loop Trail and a short segment of the Pinelands Trail are worth hiking. The Pinelands Trail is mainly used to connect to trails in the Cedar Point Preserve, both to the north of the Cedar Point property and on the other side of Pumpkin Hill Creek to the west.
The trails at Cedar Point have a lot of grass on them, and thus plenty of ticks. Once the weather warms up, mosquitoes, gnats, and biting flies make any time spent at Cedar Point pure misery.
See the following trail reviews for more information:
BOAT RAMP
Most people come to Cedar Point to launch some sort of watercraft from the concrete boat ramp. There is a parking area for a half dozen vehicles with boat trailers. This is where I began my kayak trip into the salt marsh. See the Paddling web page here on National Park Planner for details.
If you launch from Cedar Point, you have two ways to reach Sisters Creek (aka Intercoastal Waterway). One option is to proceed straight ahead, but at low tide there won’t be much water this way. The muck at the bottom is at least a foot deep, so if you get stuck, it’s not like you can get out and pull your boat to deeper water. This is the way I departed and returned, and I barely made it back. Thus, do yourself a favor and veer off to the right as soon as you depart the ramp. This is the way the motorboats go because it is much deeper.
I was at Cedar Point in two different years around 10 AM in mid-March. During my first visit, there wasn’t a bug in sight. During my second visit, the gnats were so intense that I could not function until I had put on my long pants, jacket, and a mosquito net on my head. Insect repellent had no affect on them. I have never seen so many gnats. Fortunately, by around 11 AM when things started to heat up, they disappeared. When I arrived back at the boat ramp at 2 PM there were none to be found. Thus, no telling what you’ll find, but be prepared. Supposedly when gnat season ends the flies and mosquitoes show up, so it’s pretty much miserable year-round other than perhaps during the dead of winter.
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Last updated on April 14, 2022