Oscar Scherer State Park

Oscar Scherer State Park is a Florida State Park located between Sarasota and Venice, near Osprey. The address is 1843 South Tamiami Trail. There are more than 250,000 visitors a year. The park is home to habitat for various plants and animals including birds such as the Florida scrub jay and butterflies. It has areas for cycling, hiking, and paddle craft boating.

History
The park's genesis was in 1955, when Elsa Scherer Burrows, owner of the 462 acre South Creek Ranch, died. Her will left the ranch to the state to form a park. It was to be dedicated to the memory of her father, Oscar Scherer, who had, in 1872, developed a shoe leather dyeing process. A year later, the park opened to visitors.

Thirty years after that, realtor and environmentalist Jon Thaxton started work to protect neighboring Florida scrub jay habitat. In 1992 this resulted in 922 acre being added from the adjacent Palmer Ranch that had been among the holdings of Bertha Honoré Palmer, in large part due to the Nature Conservancy, public support, and the use of Preservation 2000 funds, expanding the park's size to 1384 acre.

In September 2008, in recognition of National Public Lands Day, Lee Wetherington, a local developer and long-time park supporter, donated an additional 16.6 acre of land to the park, including the buffer property adjacent to the Willowbend subdivision (a Wetherington development), bringing the total park size to 1400 acre.

Scherer Thaxton Preserve is adjacent.

Flora
The habitats that are part of the park are pine flatwoods, scrubby flatwoods and the hardwood hammock surrounding South Creek. A variety of other plants exist within the park, like blueberry, persimmon, wild grape, cabbage palm, coontie, wax myrtle, prickly pear cacti, blackroot, beautyberry, mangrove trees and giant leather ferns (Acrostichum danaeifolium).

Fauna
Land and aquatic inhabitants include bobcats, rabbits, foxes, North American river otters, American alligators, eastern indigo snakes (Drymarchon couperi), gopher tortoises and gopher frogs.

The park is one of the few places in the state where there are enough scrubby flatwoods for the Florida scrub jay to maintain a healthy population. Other birds that can be seen in the park are bald eagles, ospreys, warblers, woodpeckers, egrets, and the great blue and little blue heron.

The 3 acre freshwater Lake Osprey has bream, bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish, among others. South Creek is brackish, so it can contain saltwater fish.

Various butterflies can be seen in the park including the zebra swallowtail whose caterpillars feed on pawpaw (Asimina).

Recreational activities
The park beaches, bicycling, boating, canoeing, fishing, hiking, kayaking, picnicking, snorkeling, swimming and wildlife viewing. It also has an interpretive exhibit and visitor center. The Legacy Trail, which runs on a former railroad route, also runs through and connects with the park.