War Veterans’ Memorial Park Turns 50

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Fifty years ago, crowds filled the parking lot of a new county park to enjoy a Memorial Day picnic and honor the service of American military veterans. Located adjacent to the Bay Pines VA Hospital complex, War Veterans’ Memorial Park had previously served as a site of slaughter, a part of the hospital complex, and a place where eagles soared.

Centuries before the first white homesteaders filed claims in the mid-1800s, ancestors of the Seminole and Miccosukee lived on the Bay Pines peninsula. Archaeologists located a prehistoric midden in the 19th century and a burial site in 1971. A portion of the Bay Pines VA Hospital site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 to recognize the people who lived in the area more than 1,000 years ago.

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A Place of Slaughter

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Four decades before the Orange Belt Railway connected a small village that became St. Petersburg to the outside world in 1888, a handful of rugged souls homesteaded along the lower Pinellas peninsula. Most chose to live near the water, then a source of endless seafood to sustain them.

Two of these settlers, Joe Silva and John Levique, captured and confined sea turtles along the shoreline at the present-day park, often sailing them to sell in New Orleans. Soon, the area where they held turtles became known as Turtlecrawl or Turtle Crawl Point. This name originates from the Dutch word “kraal” or the Spanish word “corral,” a fenced or enclosed area for animals.

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Located at the southern tip of War Veterans’ Memorial Park, Turtlecrawl Point became a place where some coastal pioneers corralled and occasionally slaughtered sea turtles during the mid and late 19th century. Locals harvested turtle meat from area waters until the early 1900s.

According to historical narratives, Silva and Levique returned to the Pinellas coastline on September 27, 1848, after taking a bountiful catch of turtles to New Orleans. During their journey, they experienced rough waters. When they arrived, they witnessed the aftermath of a powerful hurricane known as the Great Gale of ’48 that had flooded and devastated much of the largely uninhabited area.

Noticing a new opening along the barrier islands, Silva supposedly named the waterway “Johns Pass,” in honor of Levique.

A Place to Fish

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Turtlecrawl Point also became known as Seminole Point. An early post office opened near the “Bay Pines Triangle,” where Bay Pines Boulevard becomes Seminole Boulevard, in the mid 1880s.

In the early 1900s, John A. Mangold had plans to develop 93 acres near Turtlecrawl Point. He hired a surveyor in 1911 who began to plat lots for a proposed development called “Gulf Breeze.” He built a small pier at the end of a dirt road he named Main Street, but later abandoned the project. Soon thereafter, locals traveled along this road in their quest for a great fishing spot.

Fishing remained popular in the area even as sea turtle hunting declined. Turtlecrawl Point became an ideal location to catch mullet and larger fish, as well as harvest clams, oysters, and scallops from the shallow waters of Boca Ciega Bay and Long Bayou. Arthur E. Goethe opened a fish processing house at the Point by the early 1920s that supplied fish for his retail market in Clearwater.

By 1924, local Realtor Walter P. Fuller planned to sell 80 acres in the area. He hoped to fetch between $175 and $350 an acre for tracts with palmettos, large cedars, oaks, and pine trees. Fuller, who helped to establish the first Boy Scouts council in Pinellas, also supervised overnight Scout camping trips at Seminole Point during the 1920s.

A Place to Heal

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The end of the Florida land boom in the mid-1920s halted ambitions to develop Seminole Point. Plans for a possible soldiers’ home reignited interest in the area by 1929. Other sites under consideration included Lewis Island (now Coquina Key) and groves between 40th Avenue NE and Placido Bayou.

On May 26, 1931, President Herbert Hoover approved a congressional measure to establish a soldiers’ home site in the St. Petersburg area. On July 14, county leaders and St. Petersburg city officials agreed to split the $200,000 price to secure Seminole Point for this facility. The original purchase, finalized in August 1931, included the present-day park and former fishing areas at Turtlecrawl Point.

By the spring of 1932, workers earning 25 cents per hour began clearing the area. Construction ensued on the hospital and dormitory facilities. The VA site officially became known as “Bay Pines” in June 1934.

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For 35 years, Turtlecrawl Point remained a part of the Bay Pines VA Hospital campus. Although people occasionally docked along the shoreline, the area remained off-limits for public recreational use. By the 1940s, a pair of bald eagles found refuge in one of the tall pine trees, but had few human visitors.

In September 1951, a company that purchased green sea turtles for their meat from the Caribbean sought a place in Florida, possibly Pinellas County, to open a commercial turtle crawl, slaughterhouse, and canning facility. Fortunately, plans to bring this activity back to Turtlecrawl Point or Pinellas County never materialized.

A Place of Environmental Concern

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Dredging reshaped Madeira Beach and Treasure Island during the 1950s. The creation of Crystal Island, Isle of Palms, and Isle of Capri affected water flow at Johns Pass. By December 1957, some developers tried to get rights to submerged lands between Turtlecrawl Point and Johns Pass. They wanted to create additional finger islands that would have reshaped Little Bird Key and Big Bird Key.

Although these developments never received approval, a growing concern about additional landfills and their effect on currents running through Johns Pass led to conversations about the overgrown mangroves and undeveloped acreage at Turtlecrawl Point. When Bay Pines leaders deemed this area surplus land, U.S. Representative William C. Cramer filed a bill to return the acreage to the county, with plans to create a park, and perhaps a school and health department building, at the site.

Cramer’s proposal included 145 upland acres as well as 225 submerged and mangrove-filled acres. His congressional colleagues approved the measure in August 1966, with the county agreeing to remove the hospital’s sewer plant and incinerator, build a fence separating the parkland from the hospital grounds, and name the location “War Veterans’ Memorial Park.”

A Place for Recreation

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The County received a deed from the federal government in November 1966. Planning for the park stalled due to a lack of funding. Between the middle of 1968 and March 1969, county commissioners even discussed the possibility of moving the waste treatment facility built at South Cross Bayou in 1962 to Turtlecrawl Point. They chose to expand the South Cross Bayou facility instead.

The eagles that seasonally soared to a large, lightning-struck pine tree stopped visiting for a few years in the late 1960s. As workers began to develop the park, however, a pair of eagles returned in 1970. In May 1970, park officials proposed adding a sundial as a memorial and secured a surplus World War II-era tank.

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They chose to place the boat ramps near the park’s entrance, so trailers would not create traffic jams near the proposed playgrounds.

The County originally hoped to open the grounds in August 1971. The return of the eagles and a lack of facilities postponed the park’s opening. As shelters took shape in late 1972, the eagles returned and two eaglets hatched, once again delaying the opening until May 1973.

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Crews constructed a fence around the long-dead tree to create distance between park visitors and the eagle nest. War Veterans’ Memorial Park immediately became a popular destination after its opening. Official dedication ceremonies took place on April 6, 1974.

A Place for Reflection

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A half-century ago, as the 1972-73 school year came to an end, teachers at Madeira Beach Elementary School brought their students to the cafeteria to get a bagged lunch. Soon thereafter, hundreds of students began their trek from the school in a poor attempt at a single-file line. A few minutes later, they walked past the old guard station at the entrance to the VA Hospital and along Bay Pines Boulevard, on their way to the park.

The five-mile round trip was probably the first school-based field trip to the park. This adventure left lasting memories for those fortunate enough to participate. Students climbed all over the tank, something permitted back then. After that, they watched thousands of fiddler crabs scurry along the sand, enjoyed their picnic lunches, and learned about the VA hospital before returning to campus.

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War Veterans’ Memorial Park remains a popular place to visit, a great location to see the mangroves and pines that once dominated much of our shoreline.