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E-bikingBikingWalkingRunningBirdingand more
The Pinellas Trail is a paved county greenway that runs the length of Florida's most crowded peninsula. From Demens Landing on the St. Petersburg waterfront it heads north past Tropicana Field, crosses Boca Ciega Bay on the Cross Bayou Bridge, and threads Seminole, Largo, Clearwater, Dunedin, Palm Harbor, and Tarpon Springs on the old rail bed. From Tarpon Springs the route turns back south along the east side of the county, past John Chesnut Sr. Park on Lake Tarpon and the Countryside area of Clearwater, to Belleair Road. Riding is rail-grade flat on smooth asphalt with road overpasses as the only climbs. Downtown Dunedin and the Tarpon Springs sponge docks are the classic stops.
Pinellas Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Pinellas Trail has about 33 to 105 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as e-biking, hiking, biking, walking, birding, dog walking, and running, with January, March, and December the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Pinellas Trail!
There is too little deciduous tree cover along the Pinellas Trail to measure a peak color window. The trail has 8% deciduous coverage, with the majority being live oak and cabbage palmetto.
A narrow-gauge locomotive named Mattie pulled the first Orange Belt Railway train to the shore of Tampa Bay on June 8, 1888. Peter Demens had laid the three-foot track hurriedly across swamp and palmetto scrub, roughly 150 miles from Sanford. Its cars unloaded citrus, vegetables, and pine lumber straight onto steamships. Demens named the town at the end of the line St. Petersburg. He sold the road to Henry B. Plant in 1895; it later became Atlantic Coast Line track. In 1914 the Tampa and Gulf Coast Railroad pushed through Clearwater, Belleair, and Largo to St. Petersburg. The Seaboard Air Line bought it in 1915. The two systems merged in 1967 as the Seaboard Coast Line, later CSX. In 1983 CSX sold the old Tampa and Gulf Coast right of way from Belleair to 34th Street South to the state, and by the late 1980s 34 miles of Pinellas track lay abandoned. That same year Bert Valery, whose son died riding his bike, pressed county administrator Fred Marquis for a safe trail. The Friends of the Pinellas Trail formed in 1988. The first five miles opened in 1990 between Taylor Park in Largo and Seminole City Park, funded by the Penny for Pinellas sales tax. The county then built north to Tarpon Springs and south to the St. Petersburg waterfront. In 2022 the Duke Energy Trail from Enterprise Road to John Chesnut Sr. Park closed the north gap of a 75 mile county loop.
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