Highlands Hammock: Florida's First State Park
14 stops· 16 min· 3.3 mi· narrated by Ranger Quinn
Buy the self-guided tour now, or get it in the app.
- The CCC Museum
- The Road Home
- The Locals
- The First One
- The Woman Who Bought a Forest
- How to Drive the Loop
- What a Hammock Is
- The Thousand-Year Oaks
A slow drive through a piece of Florida the way it looked a thousand years ago — Highlands Hammock, one of the oldest state parks in Florida and one of the last great stands of virgin subtropical forest left anywhere. Ranger Quinn drives you around the park's famous three-mile Loop Drive, beneath ancient live oaks and towering cypress, past the old catwalk over the alligator swamp, telling you what lives in this wild green tangle and how it works. Ranger Boone Merrick rides along with the tales: the remarkable woman of the Brooklyn-Bridge family who spent a fortune to save this forest from the saw; the young men of the Depression-era tree army who built these trails by hand and hungry; and the thousand-year-old oaks that were nearly lost and are still standing. Come in the cool months, drive slow with your windows down, and watch for gators — this is Old Florida, still breathing.
Driving route · 14 stops. Live GPS playback and turn-by-turn pins are in the app.
What you'll see and hear
14 narrated stops along the way — waterfalls, overlooks, history, and Ranger Boone's campfire tales.
01🥾 Welcome to Highlands Hammock
Highlands Hammock State Park, Sebring (5931 Hammock Rd) — one of Florida's oldest parks and finest old-growth hammocks. A ~3-mi one-way Loop Drive plus short boardwalk trails. Best Nov–March. Gators are everywhere — s…
02🌲 The CCC Museum
The Civilian Conservation Corps museum, in a 1930s CCC building — the story of the young men who built this park.
The CCC Museum guide →
03🌲 The Road Home
Closing the Loop Drive back at the entrance — and a farewell from your rangers.
The Road Home guide →
04🎧 The Locals
The alligators, birds, deer — and the rare bear and panther — of Highlands Hammock, and how to behave.
The Locals guide →
05🎧 The First One
How Highlands Hammock became one of Florida's oldest — and its very first state — parks.
The First One guide →
06🔥 The Woman Who Bought a Forest
I'm Ranger Boone Merrick, and let me tell you how this forest came to be saved, because it comes down to one determined woman — and a famous name. Back in the nineteen twenties, this hammock was in danger. It was one…
The Woman Who Bought a Forest guide →
07🎧 How to Drive the Loop
How the one-way Loop Drive works, the trail pull-offs, and the ranger tram alternative.
How to Drive the Loop guide →
08🌲 What a Hammock Is
The meaning of 'hammock' — a raised island of hardwood jungle, the rarest and richest of Florida's forests.
What a Hammock Is guide →
09🌲 The Thousand-Year Oaks
The old-growth live oaks — some a thousand years old — draped in ferns and Spanish moss.
The Thousand-Year Oaks guide →
10🌲 The Garden the Boys Planted
The CCC-built botanical garden and arboretum — an early experiment in Florida horticulture.
The Garden the Boys Planted guide →
11🌲 The Cypress Swamp Catwalk
The elevated boardwalk out over the cypress swamp — gator water, giant trees, and dark reflections.
The Cypress Swamp Catwalk guide →
12🔥 The Park That Almost Wasn't
Here's a twist in this park's story that most folks never hear: Highlands Hammock came within a whisker of being a national park — and got turned down. Back in the late nineteen twenties, when people first started fi…
The Park That Almost Wasn't guide →
13🌲 The Marsh & the Birds
The open marsh along the drive — a birder's paradise year-round.
The Marsh & the Birds guide →
14🌲 Out of the Jungle
Where the dense hammock opens into pine flatwoods and marsh — the park's other faces.
Out of the Jungle guide →
What you'll see
Tap any landmark for a visitor guide — what it is, where it is, and how to hear its story.
Good to know
- How long is the Highlands Hammock: Florida's First State Park tour?
- The tour has 14 stops over about 3.3 miles with roughly 16 min of narrated audio. You set the pace — pause, linger, or skip ahead anytime.
- Do I need cell signal to use the tour?
- No. Download the tour before you go and it works completely offline — the audio plays by GPS even with no bars, which is exactly where most park tours lose signal.
- How does a self-guided audio tour work?
- You drive the route at your own pace and the Ranger Tales app plays the story for each stop automatically when you arrive, using your phone's location. No tapping, no reading while you drive. Ranger Quinn guides and Ranger Boone tells the campfire tales.
- Where does the Highlands Hammock: Florida's First State Park tour take place?
- Highlands Hammock State Park (Sebring, Florida). One of Florida's first state parks — an ancient oak hammock laced with boardwalks over a cypress swamp, with alligators and some of the oldest trees in the state, near Sebring.
- How do I get the tour?
- Download the free Ranger Tales app from the App Store, then unlock this tour inside the app. The tour downloads to your phone so it's ready offline before you arrive.
- Can I cancel or get a refund?
- Change of mind? Full refund if you request it within 24 hours of purchase. If a verified technical issue prevents access, contact support within 7 days for a refund or credit. All requests are reviewed at our discretion and refunded to your original payment method.
Buy your self-guided tour
Pick a date and book online — checkout is secure, and your unlock code arrives by email. Works offline once it's in the app.
Highlands Hammock: Florida's First State Park — in your pocket
Download the app, unlock the tour, and let it drive with you. Works offline.
Buy the self-guided tour, or get it in the app.
Keep exploring
Drive + walkCarPlayOlympic National Park
142 stops· 2 hr 8 min· 233.0 mi
A self-guided driving and walking tour of the ENTIRE Olympic National Park — three worlds in one journey: glacier-capped mountains, the wettest temperate rainforest in the Lower 48, and seventy-plus miles of wild Pacific coast, all driven on the great horseshoe of Highway 101 from Port Angeles down to Lake Quinault. Ranger Quinn guides you up every spur — Hurricane Ridge and Mount Olympus, the freed Elwha River, blue Lake Crescent, Sol Duc Falls, the Hoh Rain Forest, Rialto and Second Beach, Ruby Beach, the Kalaloch coast, and the Valley of the Rain Forest Giants — while Ranger Boone Merrick tells the tales that matter: the Lower Elwha Klallam who freed their river in the largest dam removal in American history, the Lady of the Lake, the Quileute's Move to Higher Ground, the Makah village the sea kept at Ozette, the two Roosevelts who built the park around its elk, and the world's largest spruce. This is the ancestral homeland of eight living, sovereign nations who steward it with the park today. The park interior is roadless, so you drive the perimeter and turn up the spurs; the tour plays whichever end you start from, by GPS. Around thirty dollars a vehicle gets you in for a week; cell signal dies past Port Angeles, so it works fully offline. On the coast, the tide can trap you and rolling drift logs kill — carry a tide chart and never turn your back on the ocean. 2026 note: some roads are gated by washout or fire (the Elwha beyond Madison Falls, Rialto's Mora Road in late season, the Quinault South Shore loop, Staircase) — the tour routes what's open and tells you the rest honestly; check the park's road line before you go.
Driving tourCarPlayHocking Hills — Caves, Cliffs & Waterfalls
38 stops· 1 hr 9 min· 28.4 mi
The flagship tour of Hocking Hills — six legendary stops strung along one winding scenic byway, driven at your pace with a walk at every one. Start at Cantwell Cliffs, the rugged corner most visitors miss, and squeeze down a crack in the rock the locals named a century ago. Stand inside Rock House, the only true cave in these hills — a corridor in the cliff with great arched windows where outlaws and bootleggers once kept house, so the story goes. Walk the hush of Conkle's Hollow, a boardwalk gorge beneath walls of two hundred feet, where pioneer legend says a robbers' treasure is still up on the ledge. Give the centerpiece its due at Old Man's Cave — waterfalls, the Devil's Bathtub, stone bridges raised by the CCC, and the great recess cave where the hermit Richard Rowe lived out his days with his dogs. Catch the biggest water in the hills at Cedar Falls — named by settlers who couldn't tell a hemlock from a cedar — and finish in the grandest stone room in Ohio: Ash Cave, a seven-hundred-foot amphitheater sheltering ten thousand years of human firelight, where Ranger Boone closes the day with the story of Grandma Gatewood, the sixty-seven-year-old Ohio grandmother who out-walked everyone who doubted her. Ranger Quinn guides; Boone stops you seven times for the deep stories. The park is free; the tour works fully offline — exactly what these no-signal hills require. Works in either direction, north or south. Good shoes recommended; every walk is under ninety minutes and one is fully wheelchair-accessible.
Driving tourCarPlayThe Mohawk Trail
36 stops· 53 min· 49.1 mi
Fifty miles of the Mohawk Trail — Massachusetts Route 2 — the marquee New England fall-foliage drive and, back in 1914, the very first road in the country built purely for the pleasure of the view. It climbs out of the Connecticut River valley at the great French King Bridge, up through Shelburne Falls and Charlemont into the Berkshire hills, over Whitcomb Summit and around the white-knuckle Hairpin Turn, and down into North Adams and Williamstown under the shadow of Mount Greylock. Ranger Quinn keeps you oriented and safe and tells you what you're seeing — the river gorge, the flaming maples, the old summits and their four-state views. Ranger Boone Merrick brings the tales this old road has carried for a thousand years: the Native 'Great Path' that came first, the French scout who named a rock in the river, the winter the whole town of Deerfield was marched to Canada, the railroad tunnel they called the Bloody Pit, and the mountain a novelist watched like a sleeping whale while he wrote Moby-Dick. Drive it either way. Best in late September and October, when the hills catch fire. Roll.