Weedon Island Preserve in St. Petersburg: Hours, Trails, Paddling and Rules

Weedon Island Preserve is free and open every day from 7 a.m. to a closing time posted near sunset, except the day after Thanksgiving and December 25.

Pinellas County lists the preserve at 1800 Weedon Drive NE, St. Petersburg, FL 33702, with the phone (727) 453-6500, and states free admission to both the preserve and the Cultural and Natural History Center, with donations welcome (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve website). The about page is more exact about closing: the preserve is open to a time posted at the entrance, approximately 15 minutes before sunset (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, About Us and Directions). The county hours page confirms the 7 a.m. to sunset schedule for all county parks and preserves (Pinellas County, Parks and Facilities Hours).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, on the Pinellas County and Weedon Island Preserve websites.

Weedon Island Preserve is reached from Gandy Boulevard by turning south on San Martin Boulevard, driving approximately one mile to Weedon Drive NE and turning east.

The directions come from the preserve about page, which adds that parking for the Cultural and Natural History Center is the third left after the main gate (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, About Us and Directions). Weedon Drive NE continues past that lot to its end at the fishing pier and the canoe and kayak launch, which share restrooms and a canoe washing station (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Paddling Launch). The preserve sits on the northwest shore of Old Tampa Bay, and more than half of its roughly 3,195 acres lies north of Gandy Boulevard (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Ecosystems).

Two county pages disagree on the size. The Pinellas County parks page calls Weedon Island Preserve an expansive 3,000-acre natural area (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve), while the preserve ecosystems page gives approximately 3,195 acres, with about 1,100 acres of uplands and the rest aquatic and wetland ground laced with mosquito ditches dug in the late 1950s (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Ecosystems). The preserve website uses the larger figure on its home page (3,195-acre) and its trails page (over 3,195 acres) as well (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Boardwalks and Trails). Weedon Island is owned by the state of Florida and managed through several lease agreements by the Pinellas County Department of Environment and Infrastructure (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Ecosystems).

Weedon Island Preserve has more than 4.7 miles of boardwalks and trails, including the one-mile Boy Scout Loop, almost two miles of accessible boardwalk and a 45-foot observation tower.

The county parks page gives the 4.7-mile total (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve). The boardwalks and trails page breaks it down (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Boardwalks and Trails). The Boy Scout Loop, built with help from local Boy Scout troops, runs a mile through pine flatwoods and maritime and xeric hammocks, with another 1.7 miles of natural-surface trail branching off it; parts of it are seasonally wet. Almost two miles of handicap-accessible boardwalk and pavement cross tidal flats and mangrove forest, with views over saltwater ponds where mullet and wading birds gather, and the paved link passes the Cultural and Natural History Center. The 45-foot observation tower on the west boardwalk loop gives a view, on a clear day, of the preserve, Tampa Bay and the cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa.

All Weedon Island trails are day use only, and overnight parking is not allowed (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Boardwalks and Trails). Families can borrow a backpack kit of activities and field guides at the center before a hike.

As of October 18, 2026, part of the Weedon Island Bay Boardwalk is closed for repairs expected to finish in late 2026, the north paddling trail is closed, and the preserve opens late on October 24.

The Pinellas County park updates page lists the Bay Boardwalk repair and gives late 2026 as the expected completion (Pinellas County, County Parks Updates and Closures). The same page lists a special-event closure: the preserve is closed until 12 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2026, for the Gopher Weedon Trail Run organized by Friends of Weedon Island. The county parks page separately notes that of the two self-guided paddling trails, the north trail is closed at this time, without a reopening date (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve).

The preserve website itself sends visitors to the county park updates page for temporary facility and park closures (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve website), so that page is the one to check on the morning of a visit. While the north route stays shut, the South Paddling Trail is the only self-guided paddling route open at Weedon Island.

Paddlers launch beside the Weedon Island fishing pier at the end of Weedon Drive NE onto the four-mile South Paddling Trail, and anglers fish the same pier for sheepshead, jack, snook and sea trout.

The paddling page describes the South Paddling Trail as a four-mile loop through mangroves and seagrass flats, between the preserve islands and along the edge of Tampa Bay (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Paddling Launch). It is best paddled at mid to high tide; at low tide many channels are hard to pass, so a tide chart belongs in the plan. Reddish egrets, roseate spoonbills and white ibis are the wading birds the page says to expect. The same page says paddlers can rent a canoe or kayak from ECOmersion, which also offers expert instruction and private tours, with weekday and weekend rentals.

The fishing pier stands close to where a historical bridge once linked Weedon Island to Snell Island to the south, and the preserve page names sheepshead, jack and snook as the catch (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Fishing Pier). The county page adds sea trout and notes that the outlying oyster bars are also fished, that state saltwater fishing regulations apply and that commercial fishing is prohibited (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve). Under state rules, Florida residents and visitors need a saltwater fishing license to attempt to take saltwater fish; one listed exemption covers people fishing from a pier with a valid saltwater pier license (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Do I Need a License?); neither county page says whether the Weedon Island pier carries one.

For tide planning, NOAA station 8726520 St. Petersburg, FL, established December 14, 1946, posts daily tide predictions and lists a mean range of 1.59 feet and a diurnal range of 2.26 feet (NOAA Tides and Currents, Station 8726520 St. Petersburg, FL). With a diurnal range of 2.26 feet at that city station, the preserve advice to paddle the Weedon Island loop at mid to high tide carries real weight.

No: Weedon Island Preserve bars dogs and other domesticated animals, bicycles and other unauthorized vehicles, alcohol, smoking and remote-controlled devices such as drones.

The preserve trail rules prohibit all domesticated animals, including horses and dogs, and unauthorized vehicles including bicycles, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles, and they protect every plant and animal in the preserve (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Boardwalks and Trails). The paddling rules repeat the ban on dogs, alcohol, smoking and glass containers (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Paddling Launch). On the county park rules page, pets and smoking in preserves are listed by name for Brooker Creek, Weedon Island and Shell Key, alongside a countywide ban on remote-controlled devices including drones and on balloons of any kind (Pinellas County, Park Rules).

Activities on Weedon Island land fall under the Pinellas County Preserve Ordinance, Chapter 90, and activities on the water under the Waterways Ordinance, Chapter 130 (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Paddling Launch). A dog owner looking for a Tampa Bay walk in north St. Petersburg needs a different park; the preserve rules make no exception for leashed pets.

Weedon Island human history runs from a Weeden Island culture that lasted some 800 years to a 1930s airport, and a 1,100-year-old dugout canoe dug from its shoreline is still the subject of conflicting display notices.

A National Park Service National Register of Historic Places record for the Weeden Island Site in St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, carries a date of June 13, 1972, a restricted address, a prehistoric area of significance and a period of significance of 1000-500 AD (National Park Service, NPGallery, Weeden Island Site (NRIS 72000347)). The preserve history page says the island early peoples became the Weeden Island culture, spelled with an e, which lasted some 800 years, and that later chapters brought homesteaders, speakeasies, a Hollywood movie studio and a 1930s airport (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, History and Archaeology).

The canoe was first spotted by a local resident in 2001 and excavated in 2011; the pine dugout measures 12.17 meters (39.9 feet), is longer than any other dugout found in Florida and carries a radiocarbon date of AD 690 to 1010 (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Prehistoric Canoe). The canoe page is internally inconsistent: it invites the public to view the canoe in the Welcome Center, but a later paragraph still says the canoe, held in a polyethylene glycol bath, will be reassembled and put on display at the Cultural and Natural History Center once the treatment is complete. The three-story Cultural and Natural History Center, designed with the help of Native Americans and oriented along the cardinal points with its entrance facing east, holds a free 6,000-square-foot exhibit gallery called Weedon Island Preserve: Connecting People and Place (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center). Guided naturalist tours run October through May and require advance registration (Pinellas County, Weedon Island Preserve, Guided Tours and Nature Hikes).