Parkland Bay's Everglades Gate Just Got a Six-Mile Detour

Ask anyone who bought into Parkland Bay for the water views and they'll tell you about the 178-acre lake first. Ask them what's past the back fence, and most will shrug toward the marsh grass and say something vague about the Everglades being close. It is close. What's changed this year is how you actually get there.

Parkland Bay sits in the part of the city locals call the Wedge, tucked off Hillsboro Road just south of Heron Bay, on the same stretch of far-west Parkland that real estate listings routinely describe as bordering the Everglades outright. That's not marketing language. The Hillsboro Area entrance to the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge sits at the western end of Loxahatchee Road, the corridor that runs west from State Road 7 along the Broward-Palm Beach county line. For a Parkland Bay resident, it has always been one of the shortest true-wilderness drives in Broward County. This year it's also one of the longest detours.

The Road That Actually Leads There

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's own visitor page spells out the timeline in plain terms: construction along roughly 6.2 miles of Loxahatchee Road has been underway since October 2023, with completion anticipated in early 2027. That's not a weekend closure. The refuge's guidance for reaching the Hillsboro Area gate right now is to leave US-441, turn west onto Holmberg Road, head north onto University Drive, then finally turn left onto State Highway 827, which is Loxahatchee Road, to reach the entrance from the far side of the work zone.

The City of Parkland's own project page fills in why. The Loxahatchee Road Improvements Project is a joint effort between the Florida Department of Transportation, Broward County, the county's Metropolitan Planning Organization, and the city, with FDOT running the show on a corridor that carries a price tag just under $37 million. The city's own piece of that is a single mile on the eastern end, budgeted at just under $2 million, where phased closures between Parkside Drive and US 441 began January 12, 2026 and are scheduled to run through the fall. Local access to homes and businesses along the route stays open throughout, but through traffic gets rerouted.

Mayor Rich Walker described the project in a May 2026 update to residents as roughly at its halfway point on what he called the city's northernmost artery. Read against the federal early-2027 completion window, that puts Parkland Bay residents past the midpoint of a road project that still has real months left to run. If your usual route to the refuge gate involves driving the length of Loxahatchee Road, you should plan on the long way around continuing through at least this winter.

What's Waiting at the End of It

The payoff at the far end hasn't shrunk, even if the drive has grown. The Hillsboro Area gate is open 24 hours a day, unlike the refuge's main visitor center near Boynton Beach, which keeps standard 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. hours. Entry runs $10 per vehicle for a day pass or $25 for an annual pass, and once you're in, the Perimeter Levee trail system stretches roughly 12 miles toward Hillsboro Boulevard, open to hikers, bikers, anglers, and horseback riders sharing the same packed-sand and shell-rock surface. There's a boat ramp for launching a canoe or kayak into the perimeter canal, but the only facilities on site are a portable restroom. No drinking water, no visitor center, no shade structure. You bring what you need.

What you're bringing it for is real. The refuge protects more than 145,000 acres of Everglades habitat and is home to over 250 species of birds, along with alligators, bobcats, white-tailed deer, and the federally endangered snail kite, according to the refuge's own recreation.gov listing. Sandhill cranes and wood storks show up often enough that regulars stop mentioning them.

The Free Trail Sitting at the Same Corner

Here's the detail most guides to this stretch of Parkland skip entirely. Fran Reich Preserve, managed by the South Florida Water Management District, sits at the corner of State Road 7 and Loxahatchee Road, right where you'd turn to start the drive west toward the refuge gate. It costs nothing to enter, and its official recreation listing covers bicycling, bird-watching, canoeing, fishing, hiking, and kayaking across a stretch of upland and wetland habitat where deer, bobcats, alligators, and native butterflies all turn up regularly.

The trail itself is smaller and more casual than the refuge levees. A commonly logged loop runs about 1.3 miles on packed dirt, shared with runners, cyclists, and horses, and mountain bikers who've ridden the area describe an extended route that pushes into the preserve's interior toward a limestone pit lake, with ospreys and hawks overhead and vultures perched on a nearby radio tower. There are no restrooms here either, but there's a Wawa at the SR7 corner if you need one before or after.

The two spots aren't interchangeable, but for a resident deciding where to spend a Saturday morning this season, the comparison is worth laying out plainly.

Notice that Fran Reich sits at the near edge of the very corridor under construction, while the refuge gate sits at the far edge, six miles past it. That means the free option is actually the one you can reach without touching the detour at all, while the paid federal site is the one that now requires the long way around.

Why August Isn't the Month to Count on the Rental Kiosk

There's a seasonal wrinkle worth knowing if you're planning to show up gearless. The Hillsboro entrance to the refuge has historically offered kayak, canoe, and small boat rentals on site, with hours running roughly 8 a.m. to noon for jon boats and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. for canoes and bicycles. The catch is that the outpost is typically staffed during the winter season, and not reliably outside of it. Right now, in the middle of a South Florida summer, that means showing up expecting to rent gear on the spot is a gamble. If a paddle or a bike ride is the plan, bring your own this time of year rather than counting on the kiosk being open.

What a Parkland Bay Saturday Looks Like Right Now

Put it together and the picture for a Parkland Bay resident this season looks like this. The clubhouse a few minutes from your front door still delivers the resort morning you signed up for, with the fitness center, the culinary demonstration café, and the pool deck exactly where they've always been. What's changed is the second half of the day. If the plan is a real levee hike or a paddle into refuge water, the drive now runs through Holmberg Road and University Drive rather than straight down Loxahatchee, and that's likely to remain true through the winter. If the plan is simpler, a dirt loop, a look at whatever's moving in the brush, a short ride before the heat sets in, Fran Reich Preserve sits at the corner you'd have driven past anyway, with no fee and no detour required.

Neither trail is going anywhere. The road between them is just temporarily longer than it used to be, and knowing that before you leave the driveway is worth more than knowing it after.

For more on what makes this corner of Parkland worth paying attention to, the Parkland Bay neighborhood guide covers the community in full, and Heron Bay sits close enough to share the same back door to the wilderness. If you're already living this stretch of Loxahatchee Road and have questions about what else is shifting nearby, Portia Voss has spent years tracking exactly this kind of local detail across North Broward and is always glad to talk through it.