Restoring the Boardwalk: A Look Back at Moccasin Lake's Revitalization
Before the polished, fully renovated Moccasin Lake Nature Park visitors know today, there was a stretch of years where the park looked more like a construction zone than a destination — and a Tampa Bay Times photo essay caught it right in the middle of that transition.
Heavy rains in the summer of 2015 had washed out a portion of the hiking trail crossing Alligator Creek, leaving it impassable well into the following year. The fix, when it came, was a new boardwalk providing direct access to the lake itself — letting visitors get closer to the water than the old trail ever allowed, while protecting the surrounding wetland from further erosion.
The photos also surfaced a detail most visitors still don't know: Moccasin Lake was the first park in Pinellas County to install solar power, putting a solar water heating system in place roughly three decades before this photo essay was shot. It's the kind of quiet environmental leadership the park has practiced for years without much fanfare.
Wildlife showed up in the frame too — a turtle and alligator basking on the lakeshore, a golden silk orb weaver spinning its web off the Cypress Trail — alongside longtime Friends of Moccasin Lake volunteer Lynn Sumerson, photographed touring the brand-new boardwalk she'd watched come together. Sumerson, a Clearwater Audubon Society member, has been one of the steady hands behind this park for years, and the photo essay captured her literally walking the result of that years-long advocacy.
Original source: tampabay.com, originally published Jan 2017
