John Stretch Park

John Stretch Park is a small roadside park on the south side of Lake Okeechobee. The park provides picnic areas, restrooms, a large grassy field, an outdoor basketball court and a boat ramp. Admission is not charged. The entire north edge of the park is dominated by the twenty-foot dike surrounding the lake. Set into this dike at one end of the park are flood control machinery and a lock for moving boats into and out of the lake.

This park also displays several diesel engines, valves, and pipes that once were part of the flood control facility.

The park is named in honor of John H. Stretch. A plaque in the park explains that Stretch worked as director of recreation and conservation for the flood control district between 1963 and 1970.

Read more about John Stretch Park:  Location

Famous quotes containing the words john, stretch and/or park:

    What should we know,
    For better or worse,
    Of the Long Ago,
    Were it not for Verse:
    —Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957)

    Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    Is a park any better than a coal mine? What’s a mountain got that a slag pile hasn’t? What would you rather have in your garden—an almond tree or an oil well?
    Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944)