Cocoa Conservation Area - Hiking/GEOCaching/Wandering
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 2.92 mi
- Elevation gain
- 305 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Easy
- Elevation loss
- 305 ft
- Max elevation
- 120 ft
- TrailRank
- 16
- Min elevation
- -15 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Time
- 4 hours 55 minutes
- Coordinates
- 649
- Uploaded
- December 20, 2013
- Recorded
- December 2013
near Florida Mobile Home Park, Florida (United States)
Viewed 1308 times, downloaded 2 times
Itinerary description
The Cocoa Conservation Area is another of those gems located in a residential area. It is pretty easy to get to once you realize you must pass through the community of Cocoa Bay to get to it. The entrance is located at the end of Cocoa Bay road. It is open from 7am to sunset each day with no entrance fee. There is plenty of parking and a nice, covered picnic pavilion. Once you pass through the gate you will enter another old time section of Florida. The main trails are old roads which cut through the conservation area. There are a number of game trails to explore if you so wish. I ventured off on a few, hitting some major briars on some of them. I gave up some blood and still have some thorns embedded in my hands from those adventures. I had two desires, find remnants of an old homestead and get over to see Mud Lake, I didn’t get neither done. I did see some things left from what were most likely old homesteaders, but that was it. If you ever find something cool or find a way to get to Mud Lake, let me know. The only wildlife I did see was one gator in the swamp near the road and some hog activity way back in the woods. There are some very nice GEOCaches in the area, so give them a look. For more information see my website www.tomchoma.com
Waypoints
Photo
26 ft
Alligator Spotting
Spotted alligator in the swamp
Information point
0 ft
Animal Trail
Animal Trail
Information point
39 ft
Clearing In The Woods
Just a clearing, could be from old homestead
Photo
47 ft
Dam
This looked like an old dam or water way from many, many years agao
Information point
0 ft
Entrance
Entrance at end of Cocoa Bay Blvd
Information point
11 ft
Grass Pond
Just a grass "pond"
Information point
0 ft
Hog Activity
Some hog activity in the woods
Information point
25 ft
Old Road
Old Road
Information point
0 ft
Old Trail
Old Trail
Car park
47 ft
Parking Area/Pavilion
Main parking area and picnic pavilion
Information point
40 ft
RT524
Edge of RT524
Comments (3)
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Thanks for the info Tom!
Tom,
What remnants did you find from homesteaders?
As far as what I did find -
- An old water type pipe coming up from the ground - could have been an artesion well or water from the ponds below
- Spillway which looks like once the road went over. It looks like old ponds on either side. Topo maps show a stream in that area.
- Some clearings, not sure if they were new or once was a homestead area bulldozed over by the "powers to be"
- An old hubcap that looked like it came from an old Ford truck
- Just the old roads which cut through the area in general - suspect they used them before RT524/520 were there
My experience is that homesteader area history seems to be mostly ignored and destroyed in Florida for some unknown reason. I suspect more is there, but the undergrowth is brutal!