Paradise Park, the Other Silver Springs

Down the Silver River from the main attraction, about a mile south and east of the main headspring, there was another park. A quieter one. A separate one. And its existence explains something important about the America that existed along this river for most of the twentieth century.

Silver Springs, by the nineteen forties, was one of the most popular tourist destinations in Florida. But Florida in nineteen forty-nine was a segregated state, and Black visitors were not welcome at Silver Springs. So the owners, Carl Ray and Shorty Davidson, opened a parallel attraction on the south bank of the Silver River. They called it Paradise Park.

Paradise Park opened in nineteen forty-nine. It had its own glass-bottom boat tours. It had a swimming area with a sandy beach, a dance pavilion with a jukebox, softball fields, picnic grounds, and a reptile exhibit run by herpetologist Ross Allen, similar to the one he operated at the main spring. Church groups and families came from across Florida and beyond. By nineteen fifty-three, Paradise Park was drawing large crowds. Easter egg hunts were held there. Baptisms took place in the river.

Paradise Park closed in nineteen sixty-nine, quietly, once Silver Springs was integrated. There was no big announcement. The facilities were simply not maintained and the park disappeared.

A historical marker now stands near where the entrance once stood. It is a modest acknowledgment of a place where, for twenty years, Black Floridians created something joyful and real within the boundaries of a system designed to diminish them.