Basketball courts and football fields generally require their designers to follow standard dimensions, but skate parks are by nature site-specific. Each course offers a new challenge to the individual rider: a custom landscape of concrete swells and valleys, some mimicking the experience of gliding through an urban street and others recalling the pockmarked craters of a lunar world, every rail and bowl combining to create a dance particular to the abilities of that community of skaters and carefully designed for the contours of that stretch of earth.
Still, few parks are as unique or well suited to their place as the Trail Skate Park, which rises above and dips into the river of grass right off Tamiami Trail on the Miccosukee Reservation in central South Florida. The park opened its first section in August of 2022. On a cool spring evening, skating here is potentially one of the best ways to view the Everglades, short of an airboat ride (an experience which can be purchased from tribal members nearby, along with excellent baked goods from Renee’s front porch). Miles of flat grassland and low trees spill out in shades of pink and dark green from every direction, the sky ringed by half-moons of migrating birds. Instead of the dull grey concrete of an urban park, the murals on the bowls invite skaters to throw themselves into the bright blue of the moving water which surrounds them, slowly shifting eastward across the imperceptibly inclined planes of flatland which may seem deceptively still to a creature hurtling through the air on wheels.
Tribal member Nicholas Sanders grew up skating on the reservation’s old equipment, temporary structures not designed for the space and mostly made of rusting metal that would become extremely hot under the Florida sun. When he began fundraising for a new park via a GoFundMe and food sales in early 2022, he knew he wanted to replace it with a community space, where Miccosukee youth would be able to gather and learn from each other safely. Most of their initial support came from within the tribe, but as the project began to take shape, more and more members of the Miami skating community became involved. Jason Ranft, a Miami-based skateboarder and owner of local skate building company Jay Ramps, designed the new park for the site out of concrete, with many of the old structures repurposed for another community in nearby Labelle designed by Dean “Skateboard Grandpa” Loucks.
Initial designs included the Miccosukee tribe flag, but as the park began to take shape, artist and activist Houston Cypress of the Love the Everglades Movement connected Nicholas with artist Naomi Fisher of Bas Fisher Invitational. The organization was able to use funding from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as contributions from the tribe to execute the initial mural workshops and project. “For us, it was just a way to create art in their community the way that they wanted it to be, really relying on us just to help to facilitate and realize their vision,” Fisher shared.1
Fisher brought on local artist Brian Butler, who had recently finished a series of murals featuring local history and sea life in the Northeast, to paint the main bowl. It was important to everyone involved that the young skaters who would be using the space would have the greatest voice in designing it, so BFI and Sanders hosted a series of workshops to brainstorm the mural over two days, working with Miccosukee artists including Dion Bert, Aiden Osceola, Jameson Tigertail, Jaiden Osceola, and Bennett Wilson. Everything from the color scheme to the spacing of the stencils was a community effort, with each illustration by Brian or collaborator Lisette Morales drawing on elements and characters from the Everglades and Miccosukee culture. “The mural brought life back to the skate park,” Nicholas shared in an interview. “The Miccosukee skating community is really on and off, for the adults that skate, it’s only like five or six that are really active…there’s a really big come up with kids, though. It’s a lot of kids that were there learning, which was ultimately the goal—just to get the youth to have a new activity.”
On the left, a ghost orchid rides her bike down the baby-blue bowl; on the right, a mythical swamp ape casually leans off of a skateboard. In addition to these more playful characters, some of the skaters painted on the bowl represent the five different “clans” or families of the Miccosukee tribe, like the otter and panther, both of whom are depicted here as mothers with young babies on their skateboards. The bird and frog, signifying the Bigtown clan, join them; the final, representing the Unknown clan, is signified by the only human shown, a woman whose ribbon skirt ripples behind her in the breeze as she makes a turn. These images mark it not only as a site of play for the community, but as a place where native skaters can see themselves and their families represented and deepen their relationship with this land that they have protected for hundreds of years. “The whole thing is just to have the community come together, and show that we can make good things happen if we stick together, in a way that is fun for the kids,” Sanders explained.2
Native artist Camisha Cedartree as well as other members of the community assisted Butler in the actual painting process as well as the ideation, gaining experience painting collaboratively on a large-scale mural project. “To me it almost seems like a big daunting task, but as he explained his approach to creating giant pieces of art, it all started to make sense and [became] more achievable in my eyes,” Camisha shared. She designed the alligator portion of the mural. “I am a part of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and my clan is something I hold in high regard since there are not many alligator clan people in Florida. I’ve been told stories of the past when there were more of my clan living in Florida, and they were asked various questions such as permission for alligator wrestling or permission to keep parts of an alligator to take home, like a tooth, claw, or even skull. That alligator piece I painted is also the first of many clans I’m currently working on creating, which will be a colorful ‘Clan Series’ that will be turned into posters.”3 Cedartree’s alligator is depicted smiling while riding a scooter; her young son has been a frequent visitor to the park since it opened.
Some of the species depicted in the mural and seen as family by the Miccosukee people are endangered due to oil drilling, sugar farming, and other forces of rapid ecological destruction that the tribe has fought tirelessly against. The tribe has pushed for the Western Everglades Restoration Project to re-integrate native hydrology and flood protection knowledge into the landscape, and recently won a legal battle fighting against the National Park Service’s attempts to designate Big Cypress National Preserve as a wilderness preserve, which would have limited their access rights to their ancestral lands, disregarding the critical role the Miccosukee have played in stewarding this environment for hundreds of years.4
At crucial junctures in Florida’s environmental history, the Miccosukee have been a strong and clear voice for preservation and restoration, in part because much of its destruction has happened within a few short generations. The tribe understands that the future of this land lies with its youth, many of whom enjoy skating as much as more traditional pursuits. Opening a park on the reservation encourages tribal members to stay nearby and continue to develop their relationship with their home, as well as giving them the opportunity to share their culture and tricks with visiting skaters, who are welcomed and encouraged to make the journey into the Everglades and use the park during the skating season.
BFI hosted a mural unveiling at the park in the spring of 2024 that brought an unusual community of local artists and skaters to the Miccosukee reservation, allowing new connections to form between usually disparate worlds. “What was so fun, was seeing all the levels there—people came to skate this bowl from all over Florida, from West Palm, Naples, Orlando. It’s just a beautiful place to skate now,” Fisher shared. “With the murals, you can really understand the shape of the bowl. Before, when it was sunny out, they said it was so bright on the concrete it was very difficult.” Skaters from tutifruti, a mental health advocacy skating collective serving women and girls, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ folks in Florida, met Sanders at the Skate Jam event and hosted a free six month clinic this past winter at the site, and the national organization GRLSWIRL, a global women-founded skate collective, has also hosted free skate workshops for the community there.
The tribe understands that the future of this land lies with its youth, many of whom enjoy skating as much as more traditional pursuits
The park is still a work in progress, and Sanders would like to secure more funding to add lighting and additional shade, as well as more terrain allowing for more experimentation from visitors and the community of local kids who have taken up the sport. “The fun part is just driving by and seeing them skate, how they progress, their skill levels,” Sanders shared.5 “I’d like to see more exposure from the public, more professionals come out and use it. I like seeing what they can do and how they adapt to new places.”
Trail Skate Park is located behind Miccosukee Indian School and is best located with coordinates (25.75926N, 80.79455W). The first amateur competition opens on July 4, 2025, which will include BMX, rollerblading, skateboarding, and a general best trick category at noon. The Trail AM is open to skaters of all levels and will also feature local craft and food vendors as well as fireworks.
Ray Jaffe, another local muralist, painted a second bowl in a stepped gradient design last summer; the deepest part of the bowl places you in the invisible water that surrounds the site, with thin wisps of green grass and the pastel colors of an Everglades sunset rising up on the walls around the rider. Enveloped in its concrete depths, the skater momentarily becomes like the alligator or frog hiding in the preserve—hidden from view, surrounded by bright sky.
[1] Naomi Fisher, interview by author, Zoom, December 18, 2024.
[2] Nicolas Sanders, interview by author, Zoom, April 23, 2024.
[3] Camisha Cedartree, interview by author, Zoom, January 4, 2025.
[4] Pineda, D., & Blackwell, R. (2025, January 29). In Florida, the Miccosukee Fight to protect the Everglades in the face of climate change. AP News.
[5] Nicolas Sanders, interview by author Zoom, April 23, 2024.
