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Conservation Collier Preserves: All 14 Open to the Public

Updated September 2026 · By Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar, McGreevy and Comisar at Domain Realty · More about Jesse McGreevy, Marc Comisar and our team on the McGreevy and Comisar about page.

Fourteen Conservation Collier preserves are open to the public, not the thirteen the county's own map service still implies, because Barfield Burrows on Marco Island opened in FY25. Below is every one of them with its address, trail, parking, hours and acreage, taken from the county's own Preserves feature service rather than from a tourism listing, plus the preserves that are acquired but not yet open and the resource-protection preserves you are not permitted to walk.

Why this page exists. Collier County moved its main site from colliercountyfl.gov to collier.gov and the per-preserve HTML pages did not survive the migration. Every old preserve-information and trail-maps URL now returns nothing. The county's replacement is an ArcGIS StoryMap collection, and a StoryMap is not a page a search engine or an AI answer engine can read. So the per-preserve address, hours, parking and trail description currently exists nowhere on the public web in plain, readable HTML. McGreevy and Comisar rebuilt it here, straight from the county's own Preserves feature service, which is the exact dataset that StoryMap renders.

Last verified: 30 August 2026. Last updated: September 2026. Next scheduled re-verification: 30 November 2026. We re-verify every fee, hour, closure and open or closed status quarterly, and we date the page by the verification pass rather than by the original publish date, because on this subject a six month old page is a wrong page.

How we verified these figures, and what our yardstick is

Every figure on this page carries a label saying which record it came from, and where two records disagree we print both rather than choosing the one that reads better. Preserve name, address, parking and hours are the county's own published values from the Preserves feature service. Trail descriptions are the county's prose. Acreage is the county preserve record. The count of publicly open preserves is from the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025. The research was pulled 24 and 25 August 2026 and every volatile field was re-checked on 30 August 2026 before publishing.

Benchmark table 1: the 14 Conservation Collier preserves open to the public

Yardstick: preserve name, address, parking and hours are the county's own published values from the Collier County Preserves feature service, which is the same data the county's StoryMap renders to visitors. Trail descriptions are the county's prose figures. Acreage is the county preserve record. Count of publicly open preserves is from the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025. Pull date: 24 and 25 August 2026, re-checked 30 August 2026.

Preserve

Address

Trail access (county prose)

Parking

Hours (county published)

Acres

Pepper Ranch Preserve

6315 Pepper Rd, Immokalee

More than 10 miles of trails for hiking, mountain biking and equestrian use, plus a 5 mile wildlife drive and a lake overlook

Yes

7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday on non-hunt weekends

2,655

Caracara Prairie Preserve

3980 Corkscrew Rd

2.5 mile hiking trail, trailside benches, quota hunting through the FWC CREW Wildlife and Environmental Area

None. Trails are contiguous with the CREW Cypress Dome Trails

Dawn to dusk daily

367.7

Dr. Robert H. Gore III Preserve

4055 40th Ave SE, Naples

Half mile hiking trail with interpretive signage

Street parking

Dawn to dusk daily

279.4

Rivers Road Preserve

2021 Rivers Rd, Naples

2 mile hiking trail, trailside benches, picnic table

Yes

Dawn to dusk daily

96.6

Panther Walk Preserve

2845 60th Ave NE, Naples

Half mile airplant lined hiking trail through a seasonally flooded cypress dome

Street parking

Dawn to dusk daily

84.85

Nancy Payton Preserve

1540 Blue Sage Dr, Naples

Hiking trails and equestrian trails, trailside benches

Yes

Dawn to dusk daily

71.5

Gordon River Greenway Preserve

1596 Golden Gate Pkwy, 1590 Goodlette-Frank Rd and 50 Riverside Cir, Naples

Paved pathways and boardwalks inside the park's 2.5 mile trail network, kayak launch, fishing, decorative bridges

Yes

6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily

51.05

Alligator Flag Preserve

7875 Immokalee Rd, Naples

1 mile hiking trail through seasonally flooded cypress and hydric flatwoods

None

Dawn to dusk daily

18.46

Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park Preserve

1515 Golden Gate Pkwy, Naples

Roughly 3,500 feet of boardwalk, observation decks, catch and release fishing, Freedom Memorial

Yes

Two official sources conflict. The county park page reads 8:00 a.m. to sunset and carries a January to April seasonal banner. The preserve record reads dawn to dusk daily. Call (239) 252-4062

11.6 (the Conservation Collier component of a 50 acre site)

Redroot Preserve

1330 Limpkin Rd, Naples

Visitor trail with benches

Street parking

Dawn to dusk daily

9.26

Logan Woods Preserve

831 Logan Blvd, Naples

Visitor trail with bench

None

Dawn to dusk daily

6.78

Cocohatchee Creek Preserve

1880 Veteran's Park Dr, Naples

Short walking trail, creekside observation platform, picnic tables, native plant and butterfly identification signs

None

Dawn to dusk daily

3.64

Otter Mound Preserve

1831 Addison Ct, Marco Island

Short visitor trail through Calusa shell terracing walls and an archaeological site

Yes, limited

Dawn to dusk daily

2.45

Barfield Burrows Preserve

201 S Barfield Dr, Marco Island

No trail. An observation area off the public sidewalk, looking onto gopher tortoise burrows, burrowing owls and a bald eagle nest

None

Information not available at time of publishing

2.13

Five things to know before you use that table

The count is fourteen, and it is worth getting right. Three different official Collier County numbers circulate and they are not interchangeable. Fourteen preserves are open to the public. Roughly twenty five to twenty eight named preserves exist in total, most of them classed by the county as resource protection sites with no public access. And the Board of County Commissioners has approved acquisition of 6,672 acres across 28 project locations as of August 2026, per the Conservation Collier program page, which is an acquisition program figure, not a count of places you can visit. Writing "26 preserves you can visit" is the single most common error made about this program.

The county's own GIS is one preserve behind. The Preserves feature service still carries "Public Access Status: Not open to the public" in the description field for Barfield Burrows. The Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025 supersedes it, stating verbatim that "In FY25, Barfield Burrows preserve on Marco Island was opened for public access to make a total of fourteen preserves with public access." When a county's map layer and a county's adopted annual report disagree, the annual report wins.

Do not trust a frozen page. The old collierparks.com Conservation Collier page is a 2020 referendum page still reading "4,345 acres, 21 different locations, open 13 of those preserves." It is six years stale and it still ranks.

Trail mileage is contested in five places. The county's Trails feature service and the county's own prose disagree on Alligator Flag, Rivers Road, Caracara Prairie, Dr. Gore and Pepper Ranch. We publish the prose figure in the table above, because the prose figure is what the county tells visitors. The GIS layer, for reference, computes about 22.45 total trail miles at Pepper Ranch and about 13.23 miles of clearly public trail, against the county's public-facing "10+ miles."

Three preserves are close but not open. Rattlesnake Hammock Preserve at 6371 Adkins Ave is acquired, permitting is in process and construction is anticipated to begin in FY27. Black Bear Path Preserve, west of Everglades Boulevard and south of 38th Avenue SE, was acquired in June 2025 with planned trail access in FY26 or FY27. And the building at the Dr. Gore preserve remains closed pending building permits and ADA accessibility upgrades scheduled for FY27, although the Gore trails are open. A newly acquired Golden Gate Estates preserve currently carried as "Symphony, name to be determined" has a proposed name of Serenoa Preserve and a planned FY27 opening.

What "parking: none" and "parking: street" actually mean in that table

Those two words in the parking column are the county's own, and they carry more weight than they look like they do. Getting them wrong is how a Saturday morning turns into a forty minute drive and a U turn.

"Parking: none" means there is no lot, and it does not mean the preserve is closed. Four of the fourteen open preserves have no parking at all: Alligator Flag on Immokalee Road, Logan Woods on Logan Boulevard, Cocohatchee Creek on Veteran's Park Drive and Caracara Prairie on Corkscrew Road. Three of those four are effectively neighborhood preserves reached on foot from an adjacent street or park. Cocohatchee Creek is the easiest of them, because it sits immediately adjacent to Veterans Community Park at 1895 Veterans Park Drive, so you park in the county park lot for free and walk in. Caracara Prairie is the outlier: it has no parking of its own because its trails are contiguous with the CREW Cypress Dome Trails, and the CREW trailhead is where you start.

"Parking: street" means exactly that, and in Golden Gate Estates it means a swale. Dr. Robert H. Gore III on 40th Avenue SE, Panther Walk on 60th Avenue NE and Redroot on Limpkin Road are all street parking preserves on Estates roads with no curb, no shoulder line and no marked spaces. Plan for a low clearance vehicle to sit on grass, and plan for that grass to be soft in the wet season. These are also the three preserves where a passenger car after a heavy August rain is a genuinely bad idea.

Five preserves have real parking. Pepper Ranch, Rivers Road, Nancy Payton, Gordon River Greenway and Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park all have a lot, and Otter Mound on Marco Island has limited parking. If you want a first Conservation Collier experience that behaves like a normal park visit, with a lot, a restroom and a paved surface, Gordon River Greenway is the one, and its 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. hours are the longest in the system and the only preserve hours confirmed on two separate county pages.

Restrooms are the exception, not the rule. Across the fourteen, restrooms are published only at Pepper Ranch, Gordon River Greenway and Freedom Park. Everywhere else, plan accordingly before you leave.

"Dawn to dusk" is the county's phrasing, and for ten of the fourteen preserves it is the only hours statement the county publishes anywhere. The old per-preserve HTML pages are gone, the 311 knowledge base article that used to answer this points back at dead URLs, and the description field inside the county's GIS feature service is now, literally, the county's published preserve information. That is the whole reason this table exists in HTML.

And two preserves are not walks at all. Barfield Burrows on South Barfield Drive is an observation area off a public sidewalk looking onto gopher tortoise burrows, burrowing owls and a bald eagle nest. There is no trail, no parking and no published hours. Pepper Ranch, at the other extreme, is a 2,655 acre working preserve with a campground, a five mile wildlife drive and a managed hunt program, open only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday on non-hunt weekends, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Turning up at Pepper Ranch on a Tuesday, or on a hunt weekend, means turning around.

The 14 Conservation Collier preserves, one by one

Every profile below is built from the county's own Preserves feature service, cross-checked against the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025 and the program's acquisition dashboard. Program contact for all fourteen: Conservation Collier, 2800 N Horseshoe Dr, Naples FL 34104, (239) 252-2961, Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Pepper Ranch Preserve, Immokalee

6315 Pepper Road, Immokalee. 2,655 acres, by far the largest preserve in the program and larger than every other one combined. Acquired 6 February 2009 with additional parcels in 2023 and 2024, at a total of $33,703,600. It is the only Conservation Collier preserve with a campground, booked through the county's ActiveNet reservation system, and the only one with a five mile wildlife drive and a lake overlook. More than ten miles of trails carry hiking, mountain biking and equestrian use. Restrooms on site. Visitor Center (239) 567-1999, rentals and reservations (239) 252-4449.

Open 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday on non-hunt weekends only, in season. Two official county sources disagree on the season: the GIS record says November through June, while the county's own 2025 to 2026 Pepper Ranch open hours flyer says November through May. The times match in both. That flyer published the hunt weekend closures for the season as 22 and 23 November, 20 and 21 December, 17 and 18 January, 28 February through 1 March, 14 and 15 March, and 4 and 5 April. Wildlife the county names here: Florida panther, black bear, white-tailed deer, wild turkey, river otter, bobcat, swallow-tailed kite, crested caracara and Florida sandhill crane.

Caracara Prairie Preserve, Corkscrew Road

3980 Corkscrew Road. 367.7 acres, acquired 17 December 2007 for $5,032,000 in partnership with the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed Trust, which contributed $300,000. A 2.5 mile hiking trail with trailside benches runs through a former cattle ranch. Open dawn to dusk daily.

The thing to understand before you drive out: it has no parking of its own, because its trails run continuously into the CREW Cypress Dome Trails at 3980 County Road 850, and that CREW trailhead is where you start. CREW hours are one hour before sunrise to one hour after sunset, admission free, donations accepted. Quota hunting runs here through the FWC CREW Wildlife and Environmental Area. Named wildlife includes Florida panther, black bear, Florida sandhill crane, crested caracara and swallow-tailed kite. Although the preserve is Collier County owned, the Corkscrew Road corridor straddles the county line, so this is the closest Conservation Collier preserve for buyers in the Estero communities along Corkscrew Road.

Dr. Robert H. Gore III Preserve, Golden Gate Estates

4055 40th Avenue SE, Naples. 279.4 acres, and still growing: the county acquired parcels from November 2018 through August 2025 for $3,255,940 and is still buying. The public trail is a half mile hiking loop with interpretive signage, open dawn to dusk daily, with street parking only on a Golden Gate Estates road that has no curb and no marked shoulder.

One live caveat that matters if you are planning a group visit: the nature center building at the Gore preserve remains closed pending building permits and ADA accessibility upgrades scheduled for FY27, per the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025. The trails themselves are open. This is one of the strongest panther and bear preserves in the system by the county's own wildlife list, which names Florida panther, Florida black bear, bobcat, swallow-tailed kite, grey fox and striped skunk.

Rivers Road Preserve, Golden Gate Estates

2021 Rivers Road, Naples. 96.6 acres, assembled from a first 62.98 acre purchase in December 2008 plus parcels in 2010, 2023 and 2024, at a total of $5,804,800. Open dawn to dusk daily, with a real parking lot, which puts it in the minority of Conservation Collier sites.

County prose describes a 2 mile hiking trail with trailside benches and a picnic table. The county's own trails layer computes about 1.54 miles total and about 1.04 miles of clearly public trail, so treat 2 miles as the county's public-facing figure rather than a measured one. Wildlife named by the county: Florida panther, Florida black bear and white-tailed deer. For buyers on the Immokalee Road corridor in 34120 this is the nearest preserve with parking, which is a genuine differentiator against the street-parking preserves further south.

Panther Walk Preserve, Golden Gate Estates

2845 60th Avenue NE, Naples. 84.85 acres acquired between June 2007 and August 2025 for $1,851,900, and still actively being acquired. The walk is a half mile airplant lined trail through a seasonally flooded cypress dome, which is exactly as beautiful and exactly as wet as that sounds. Open dawn to dusk daily, street parking only.

Plan this one for late spring. The cypress dome floods seasonally by design, and the parking is a swale on a 60th Avenue NE right of way. Wildlife the county names here is the strongest short list in the Estates: Big Cypress fox squirrel, Florida panther, Florida black bear, white-tailed deer, swallow-tailed kite and bobcat.

Nancy Payton Preserve, Golden Gate Estates

1540 Blue Sage Drive, Naples. 71.5 acres, with the bulk of 65 acres acquired in 2005 and the remaining parcels in 2008, 2010 and 2024, at $2,567,250. Open dawn to dusk daily, with parking.

This is the equestrian preserve. The county lists hiking trails and equestrian trails with trailside benches, and it is one of only two Conservation Collier sites where horses are part of the published use, the other being Pepper Ranch. For Estates acreage listings marketed to horse owners in 34116 and 34117 that is a specific, checkable amenity rather than a vague one. The county's wildlife list here is unusually long and bird-heavy: Florida panther, white-tailed deer, red-cockaded woodpecker, red-headed woodpecker, northern flicker, brown-headed nuthatch, bobwhite quail, gopher tortoise, purple martin and great horned owl.

Gordon River Greenway Preserve, Naples

1596 Golden Gate Parkway, 1590 Goodlette-Frank Road and 50 Riverside Circle, Naples. 51.05 acres acquired 7 April 2006 for $2,475,000. It is the Conservation Collier component sitting inside the county's larger Gordon River Greenway park, and it is the easiest preserve in the system to visit.

Hours are 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily, the longest in the program and the only preserve hours confirmed independently on a second county page. Paved pathways and boardwalks, a kayak and canoe launch with a storage rack, fishing and lookout piers, decorative bridges, a playground with a tree house, restrooms and water fountains. Leashed dogs are allowed here, which is not true of most preserves. There is rear entrance access to the Naples Zoo and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, and a connection to downtown Naples by way of the City of Naples' Baker Park. Named wildlife: gopher tortoise, wading birds, bald eagle, bobcat, river otter and manatee.

Alligator Flag Preserve, Immokalee Road

7875 Immokalee Road, Naples. 18.46 acres acquired 28 July 2006 for $4,950,000, which is the highest per-acre price in the open portfolio and a reflection of where it sits. County prose describes a 1 mile hiking trail through seasonally flooded cypress and hydric flatwoods; the county trails layer computes 0.49 miles, one of the five prose-versus-GIS conflicts on this page. Open dawn to dusk daily.

No parking. This is a walk-in preserve off a busy six lane arterial, which is the single most important practical fact about it. Wildlife the county names: Big Cypress fox squirrel, Florida black bear and white-tailed deer.

Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park Preserve, Central Naples

1515 Golden Gate Parkway, Naples. The Conservation Collier component is 11.6 acres inside a 50 acre site, acquired 19 June 2008 for $50,950 in partnership with the county's Transportation Stormwater and Parks and Recreation departments, which is why the price looks nothing like the others. Roughly 3,500 feet of boardwalk, six lookout pavilions, a five acre lake, observation decks, catch and release fishing, restrooms and the Freedom Memorial. Phone (239) 252-4062.

Two official county sources conflict on hours. The county park page reads 8:00 a.m. to sunset and carries a banner saying the park is open seasonally January through April; the preserve record reads dawn to dusk daily. The likely cause, from the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025, is a boardwalk project repairing more than 400 pilings that can only be built in the dry season and will run over two to three dry seasons. Call (239) 252-4062 before you drive over. The Education and Exhibit Center building is separately listed as closed. Wildlife: river otter, bobcat, migratory warblers, barred owl, wading birds and Florida box turtle.

Redroot Preserve, Golden Gate Estates

1330 Limpkin Road, Naples. 9.26 acres acquired 25 August 2006. The purchase is a good example of how this program actually assembles land: total parcel cost was $460,000, of which Collier County Public Utilities paid $20,000 for a 100 by 150 foot section in the northeast corner as a potential future well site, leaving Conservation Collier paying $440,000. A short visitor trail with benches, open dawn to dusk daily, street parking on a Golden Gate Estates road.

A name correction worth carrying. There is no Limpkin Marsh Preserve in Collier County. It does not appear in the official Preserves layer. Redroot Preserve sits on Limpkin Road and is almost certainly the source of that circulating name. Wildlife: migratory warblers, woodpeckers and wading birds.

Logan Woods Preserve, Logan Boulevard

831 Logan Boulevard, Naples. 6.78 acres acquired 28 October 2005 for $711,983, alongside a county Transportation Department purchase of roughly 1.8 acres of the same original parcels for $118,017, held as right of way for a future Pine Ridge Road and Logan Boulevard expansion. A visitor trail with a bench and a trash receptacle. Open dawn to dusk daily, no parking.

This is a neighborhood preserve in the truest sense: it serves Logan Woods and the Pine Ridge Road corridor on foot, and it is the closest Conservation Collier land to the Vineyards and Wilshire Lakes side of 34119. Wildlife: migratory birds, wading birds and bobcat.

Cocohatchee Creek Preserve, North Naples

1880 Veteran's Park Drive, Naples. 3.64 acres acquired 1 July 2004 for $476,200, one of the very first Conservation Collier purchases. A short walking trail, a creekside observation platform, picnic tables and benches, and native plant and butterfly identification signs. Open dawn to dusk daily.

The county lists parking as none, but that is the easiest "none" in the system to work around: the preserve sits immediately adjacent to Veterans Community Park at 1895 Veterans Park Drive, so you park free in the county park lot and walk in. That also means you can go from a pickleball court to a creekside boardwalk in about two minutes, which is a real amenity story for listings in 34109 and 34110. Wildlife: gopher tortoise, migratory warblers, wading birds, American alligator and river otter.

Otter Mound Preserve, Marco Island

1831 Addison Court, Marco Island. 2.45 acres, assembled as 1.77 acres on 30 July 2004 plus 0.68 acres on 18 June 2007, at a total of $2,234,000. Open dawn to dusk daily, with limited parking: three standard spaces plus one accessible space and a bike rack at the Addison Court entrance.

This is an archaeological site as much as a preserve. The trail is a shaded mulched loop with benches and interpretive signs through Calusa shell terracing walls, on a shell mound dated roughly 700 to 1,200 A.D., which is the highest natural elevation on Marco Island. Digging and artifact collection are prohibited. The county records 57 bird species and 127 plant species here, and classes tropical hardwood hammock as the highest priority habitat under the Conservation Collier ordinance. There are no restrooms and no drinking water. Note that Collier County publishes no hours specific to Otter Mound outside the preserve record, and two unofficial sources conflict, so use the county's dawn to dusk and nothing else. Dogs are permitted on leash here, which the county states explicitly. Preserve manager line (239) 252-2960.

Barfield Burrows Preserve, Marco Island

201 S Barfield Drive, Marco Island. 2.13 acres acquired 5 January 2024 for $3,140,000. This is the preserve that took the county from thirteen to fourteen, and it is the one most likely to disappoint anyone who shows up expecting a hike.

There is no trail and no parking. What exists is an observation area off the public sidewalk looking onto gopher tortoise burrows, burrowing owls and a nesting bald eagle. The county's wildlife list adds short-tailed hawk and several pollinator species. It shares a management plan with Otter Mound. Published hours: Information not available at time of publishing. The county's GIS record still carries the pre-opening line "Public Access Status: Not open to the public," which the Conservation Collier Annual Report 2025 supersedes, and no hours statement replaced it.

The preserves that are acquired but not open yet

Four sites are worth watching, and three of them are worth watching for real estate reasons.

Rattlesnake Hammock Preserve, 6371 Adkins Avenue, 37.16 acres acquired 10 August 2020 for $1,480,000. The county's status line reads acquired, permitting in process, construction anticipated to begin in FY27, and the gating item is a parking lot capital project. That is the single most consequential unopened preserve in the county, because it would put public preserve access inside a dense East Naples submarket that currently has none, along the Rattlesnake Hammock Road corridor near Lely, Royal Wood and Naples Lakes.

Black Bear Path Preserve, west of Everglades Boulevard and south of 38th Avenue SE, 17.7 acres acquired 12 June 2025 for $502,500, with planned trail access in FY26 or FY27.

Symphony Preserve, name to be determined, a newly acquired Golden Gate Estates site with a management plan and naming in progress. The proposed name is Serenoa Preserve and the planned opening is FY27. Its size, acquisition date and cost are not published in the county layer, so those fields are Information not available at time of publishing.

James E Williams Jr Preserve, carried in the county layer as acquired with a management plan in progress, with approximate coordinates placing it in the Immokalee and Pepper Ranch vicinity. Location, size, access, acquisition date and cost: Information not available at time of publishing.

Buying or selling near a Collier County park? Start with the amenity, not the listing photo.

Barfield Burrows brought Collier County to fourteen publicly open Conservation Collier preserves in FY25, and it is a sidewalk observation pad with no parking and no trail. That distinction is exactly the kind of thing that decides whether a street works for how you actually live, and it is not in any MLS field. We map it for you before you write an offer.

If you are buying, we will pull the preserve, beach, boat ramp and community park picture for every address on your list, including which beach lots close to new vehicles in season, and put it beside the numbers in our Southwest Florida buyer representation guide.

If you are selling, the parks and preserves within a few minutes of your door are marketable facts that most listings leave on the table, and they belong in the pricing conversation. Start with a current valuation of your Collier County home.

Or just call. Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072, Marc Comisar at (239) 287-5873. McGreevy and Comisar, brokered by Domain Realty.

The resource protection preserves, and why you cannot walk them

Roughly a dozen further Conservation Collier preserves exist that are classed Resource rather than Public in the county's own scheme, meaning they were bought for habitat, water quality and flood control rather than recreation. The StoryMap's own category aliases spell this out: Public means "Preserves with Public Access Trails," Resource means "Preserves for Resource Protection." They are not closed as a temporary condition, and asking the county to open them is not a queue you can join.

The larger ones: McIlvane Marsh Preserve, 385.89 acres south of Tamiami Trail East and west of San Marco Road, home to crested caracara, wood stork, American crocodile and Florida panther, and paddle-adjacent because McIlvane Bay is reachable from the Isles of Capri Paddlecraft Park. North Belle Meade Preserve, 295.83 acres east of the county landfill, still being acquired, which maintains the habitat link between Picayune Strand State Forest and the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. Red Maple Swamp Preserve, 246.22 acres north of Immokalee Road and west of Wilson Boulevard. Shell Island Preserve, 130.61 acres surrounded on three sides by Rookery Bay. Railhead Scrub Preserve, 127.85 acres off Old 41 near the Lee County line. Winchester Head Preserve, 114.9 acres east of Everglades Boulevard North between 41st and 35th Avenues NE, protecting snail kite and native apple snail habitat. Camp Keais Strand Preserve, 32.5 acres in the Rural Lands Stewardship Area flowway, which the county says cannot be opened because there are no access roads. Wetwoods Preserve, 26.8 acres west of US 41 south of Wiggins Pass Road.

One number in that group we will not publish as fact. The county GIS layer records an acquisition cost of $31,137,036 for the 127.85 acre Railhead Scrub Preserve. That is an order of magnitude above every comparable preserve in the same layer and looks like a data entry error, so we are flagging it rather than repeating it.

And one naming trap. North Belle Meade Preserve is a Conservation Collier county preserve with no public access. The Belle Meade Tract is a completely different place: it is the western tract of Picayune Strand State Forest, state managed by the Florida Forest Service, and it carries the 22 mile horse trail. Two agencies, two places, one name.

Talk to the team that mapped these preserves

A preserve boundary is one of the few things next to a Collier County home that cannot be rezoned into something else next year, and it is priced into some streets and invisible on others. If you are buying, Marc Comisar walks these neighborhoods every week and can tell you which addresses actually back onto protected land and which just look like they do. Call Marc at (239) 287-5873, or read how we represent buyers across Collier County. If you are weighing a sale and want to know what a preserve-adjacent home is worth right now, start with a Collier County home valuation or call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072. As Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, we answer our own phones.

Which Collier County communities sit closest to a preserve

Preserve adjacency behaves differently from park adjacency in a listing. A park is an amenity you drive to; a preserve is usually a permanent edge to the development pattern, which is why it shows up in price more quietly and more durably. Here is how the open preserves map onto the communities we work in most, and the wider park system is covered on our Collier County parks, preserves and beaches guide.

  • Golden Gate Estates carries more of this system than anywhere else in the county: Dr. Robert H. Gore III, Rivers Road, Panther Walk, Nancy Payton, Redroot and Logan Woods all sit inside or against it. See Golden Gate Estates.
  • Central and North Naples reach Gordon River Greenway Preserve, Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park Preserve and Cocohatchee Creek Preserve. See Naples and Naples Park.
  • Marco Island holds two of the fourteen, Otter Mound and Barfield Burrows. See Marco Island.
  • Immokalee and the eastern county reach Pepper Ranch, the largest at 2,655 acres, and Alligator Flag on Immokalee Road.

Frequently asked questions about Conservation Collier preserves

How many Conservation Collier preserves are open to the public?

Fourteen. The county's own map service still implies thirteen, because Barfield Burrows Preserve on Marco Island opened in FY25 and the map layer had not caught up when we pulled it on 25 August 2026.

Do Conservation Collier preserves charge admission?

No. Admission to the Conservation Collier preserves is free. What varies is parking and hours, and several have no parking at all, which is the practical constraint rather than cost.

Which Conservation Collier preserve is the largest?

Pepper Ranch Preserve in Immokalee at 2,655 acres, with more than ten miles of hiking, mountain biking and equestrian trails, a five mile wildlife drive and a lake overlook. It is also the only one with camping.

Which preserve allows camping?

Pepper Ranch Preserve. It is the only Conservation Collier preserve with camping, and it is also the one with the most restricted opening pattern, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday to Sunday on non-hunt weekends.

Can I bring a dog to a Conservation Collier preserve?

Rules differ by preserve and several prohibit dogs outright to protect ground-nesting wildlife. Check the individual preserve entry above before you drive, and note that Collier County beach parks prohibit dogs entirely.

What does "parking: none" mean on the preserve table?

It means the county publishes no parking facility for that preserve, not that access is forbidden. Several are reached on foot from an adjoining trail system or from street parking, and the table's parking column says which.

Are there Conservation Collier preserves that are closed to the public?

Yes. Some parcels are acquired but not yet open while management plans and access are built, and a separate group are resource-protection preserves that are deliberately not walkable. Both groups are listed above so you do not drive to one expecting a trail.

Is Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary a Conservation Collier preserve?

No. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is an Audubon property with its own admission and hours, and the CREW trails are managed by the CREW Land and Water Trust with the South Florida Water Management District. Neither is part of Conservation Collier.

Where does the Conservation Collier money come from?

Conservation Collier is a voter-approved land acquisition programme funded by a dedicated ad valorem levy, and the acquisition and management records are published through the county's land acquisition portal.

What we could not verify, and what we are deliberately not publishing

Honesty about gaps is the reason the rest of this page can be trusted.

We are not publishing a preserve closure list. Collier County rebuilt collierparks.com on a new platform, the consolidated Openings and Closures page is gone, the new home page carries no alert banner, and the old collier.gov preserve URLs now return 404. Call the managing agency before you drive.

A $31,137,036 acquisition cost appears in the county GIS layer for the 127.85 acre Railhead Scrub Preserve. It is an order of magnitude above every comparable preserve and looks like a data entry error, so we are not publishing it as fact.

Names that do not exist, so you do not waste a Saturday looking for them. There is no Limpkin Marsh Preserve; Redroot Preserve sits on Limpkin Road. There is no Barefoot Beach Preserve State Park; Barefoot Beach is county managed.

Your local real estate experts

McGreevy and Comisar are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 and the number one real estate team in Southwest Florida since 2012. Jesse McGreevy has lived in Estero since 2003 and bought his first home here in January 2004. Marc Comisar is in the field on listing appointments and buyer tours every week, which is where the street-level detail in this guide comes from.

McGreevy and Comisar alone have over $900 million in sales. McGreevy and Comisar and their Domain Realty Group team have sold over $2.5 Billion in Real Estate across more than 4,000 transactions. They are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 and hold the 5 Star Award for Customer Satisfaction for 20 Straight Years from Gulfshore Life Magazine.

McGreevy and Comisar lead Domain Realty Group, a full service Southwest Florida real estate team. Learn more about our team at DomainRealtyGroup.com.

For this guide we tracked all fourteen open preserves against the county's own Preserves feature service rather than its map page, and we tracked every hour, parking note and access rule through two verification passes six days apart. As Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, we know which Collier County communities genuinely back onto protected land and which only look like they do. Call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072 to talk it through, or reach Marc at (239) 287-5873.

Our Collier County deep-dive pages: Collier County parks, preserves and beaches, Naples beach parking, Collier County tennis and pickleball, Naples golf communities, Naples, Golden Gate Estates, Naples Park, Marco Island, Olde Naples, Lely Resort and the Collier County hub.

Contact McGreevy and Comisar

  • Jesse McGreevy: (239) 898-6072 · [email protected]
  • Marc Comisar: (239) 287-5873
  • Office: 24031 S Tamiami Trl #101, Bonita Springs, FL 34134

We are Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 and we answer our own phones at (239) 898-6072.

What our clients say

Jesse McGreevy is a top-reviewed Collier County realtor. As Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, here is what clients say.

★★★★★ "Jesse was very professional, helpful and kept in touch with ideas and suggestions which developed into a sale. Highly recommend his company for their excellent follow through." Verified Google review

★★★★★ "Marc was extremely helpful in the sale of our old home and getting our new home to the condition that we wanted it to make it ours. He has been available to us for every step of our journey, even after the transaction closed." Verified Google review

★★★★★ "Marc and Jesse are truly great people and they care about the people that they work with. Marc made our house purchase seamless and we closed within 30 days. If you want someone that is gonna treat you like family, well you found them." Verified Google review

★★★★★ "Marc is extremely knowledgeable, professional and a true pleasure to work with. He kept us informed throughout the process and went over and beyond our expectations to ensure an extremely smooth process." Verified Google review

Read more five-star reviews on Google

Sources and authoritative references

Preserve names, addresses, hours, parking, trails and acreage come from Collier County's own published records, and where the county prose and the county GIS layer disagree we print both and say which is which. Research pulled 24 and 25 August 2026; every volatile field re-checked 30 August 2026. Next scheduled re-verification 30 November 2026.

  1. Collier County, Conservation Collier programme page. https://www.collier.gov/Resident-Resources/Conservation-Collier
  2. Collier County Preserves feature service, the dataset the county StoryMap renders. https://services2.arcgis.com/SlIq32SqARUHIhSx/arcgis/rest/services/Preserves/FeatureServer/0/query
  3. Conservation Collier ArcGIS StoryMap collection, the county replacement for the retired preserve pages. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/d2b6d78bb9204c1185bb1f21abf122ae
  4. Conservation Collier preserve management plans and 2025-2026 preserve flyer (PDF). https://www.collier.gov/files/assets/county/v/1/public-services/documents/conservation-collier/preserve-management-plans/2025-2026-pr-flyer.pdf
  5. Collier County Trails feature service. https://services2.arcgis.com/SlIq32SqARUHIhSx/arcgis/rest/services/Trails/FeatureServer/1
  6. Collier County Parks feature service. https://services2.arcgis.com/SlIq32SqARUHIhSx/arcgis/rest/services/Parks/FeatureServer/52/query
  7. Collier County Parcels feature service. https://services2.arcgis.com/SlIq32SqARUHIhSx/arcgis/rest/services/Parcels/FeatureServer/42
  8. Collier County Growth Management ArcGIS dashboard. https://colliercountygmd.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/8bcb6480154540ee8cd73cb0d95ce708
  9. Collier County Engage portal, land acquisition. https://engage.collier.gov/land-acquisition
  10. Collier County Engage portal, land acquisition supporting document. https://engage.collier.gov/31450/widgets/110563/documents/80723/download
  11. 2025 Collier County Annual Update and Inventory Report, park land inventory, PDF pages 97 to 99. https://www.collier.gov/files/assets/county/v/1/planning-and-zoning/documents/2025-auir-final.pdf
  12. Collier County Parks and Recreation Impact Fee Study, final report 10-8-25. https://www.collier.gov/files/assets/county/v/1/impact-fees/collier-parks-and-rec-if-study_final-rpt-10-8-25.pdf
  13. Collier County Parks and Recreation Master Plan, 2018 final. https://www.collierparks.com/files/assets/parks/v/1/documents/2018masterplanfinal.pdf
  14. Collier County Parks and Recreation, park and beach directory. https://www.collierparks.com/
  15. Collier County government, main portal after the colliercountyfl.gov migration. https://www.collier.gov/
  16. Collier County 311 knowledge base, park and preserve locations. https://colliercountyfl.qscend.com/311/knowledgebase/article/563
  17. Collier County, Gordon River Greenway. https://www.collierparks.com/Parks-and-Beaches/Regional-Parks/Gordon-River-Greenway
  18. Collier County, Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park. https://www.collierparks.com/Parks-and-Beaches/Regional-Parks/Fred-W-Coyle-Freedom-Park
  19. Freedom Park master plan, May 2012 (PDF). https://apps4.colliercountyfl.gov/visionftp/GMDNorth/ConCollier/MP_FreedomPark_05.2012.pdf
  20. Pelican Bay NRPA management plan, final version 65 (PDF). https://www.collier.gov/files/assets/county/v/1/advisory-boards/pelican-bay-services-division/documents/cb_nrpa_managementplanfinalversion65.pdf
  21. South Florida Water Management District, Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed. https://www.sfwmd.gov/recreation-site/corkscrew-regional-ecosystem-watershed-crew
  22. CREW Land and Water Trust, Marsh Trails. https://crewtrust.org/crew-marsh-trails/
  23. CREW Land and Water Trust, Cypress Dome Trails. https://crewtrust.org/cypress-dome-trails/
  24. FWC, Picayune Strand cooperative recreation area. https://myfwc.com/recreation/cooperative/picayune-strand/
  25. Florida Forest Service, Picayune Strand State Forest. https://www.fdacs.gov/Forest-Wildfire/Our-Forests/State-Forests/Picayune-Strand
  26. Florida State Parks, Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/fakahatchee-strand-preserve-state-park
  27. Florida State Parks, Collier-Seminole State Park hours and fees. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/collier-seminole-state-park/hours-fees
  28. Florida Aquatic Preserves, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. https://floridaaquaticpreserves.org/managed-areas/national-estuarine-research-reserves-nerrs/rookery-bay-national-estuarine-research
  29. Rookery Bay Environmental Learning Center, visit information. https://rookerybay.org/visit/environmental-learning-center/
  30. US Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge trails. https://www.fws.gov/refuge/florida-panther/visit-us/trails
  31. Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, visit information. https://www.audubon.org/corkscrew/visit
  32. Conservancy of Southwest Florida, nature experience. https://conservancy.org/natureexperience/

McGreevy and Comisar, Best Realtor for Collier County. Brokered by Domain Realty. Jesse McGreevy, FL Lic. SL3101296 · Marc Comisar, FL Lic. BK3060671.