Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve

Brooker Creek is a small waterway in Northwest Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. Brooker Creek flows through two nature preserves, agricultural, and residential areas before eventually emptying into Lake Tarpon. Lake Tarpon then flows into Tampa Bay.

Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve is a 1121 acre preserve located in the Keystone area of Hillsborough County. It is owned by the Southwest Florida Water Management District and operated by Hillsborough County Conservation and Environmental Lands Management Department. This preserve exists to protect the health of the headwaters of Brooker Creek and its contribution to Lake Tarpon and Lake Keystone. The preserve includes several miles on unpaved hiking paths and also contains portions of the paved Upper Tampa Bay Trail from Van Dyke Road to the Suncoast Parkway on Lutz Lake Fern Road.

The headwaters consist of a chain of wetlands on the north side of Lutz Lake Fern Road (outside of the preserve boundary) and flow southwest until they reach Lake Keystone. The blue line in the diagram below is the general path of Brooker Creek through the wetland chains (light blue). The red outline is the Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve boundary. 


The image below shows the drainage culvert where the water flow crosses underneath Lutz Lake Fern Road. In the image above, this is roughly where the blue line crosses underneath the roadway in the Northeast portion of the map. The drainage culvert can be seen in the center portion of the image below. This image was taken from the Upper Tampa Bay Trail boardwalk on the South side of Lutz Lake Fern Road. Lutz Lake Fern Road is the roadway in the image above.


The blue line in the map image above is not exact and was drawn before Hillsborough County had access to LiDAR mapping. The images below show the tributaries between the larger wetlands using LiDAR with the same blue line layered on top. The LiDAR imagery shows the true water flow through this area. 





Brooker Creek Headwaters Nature Preserve is worth a stop and a hike either on the unpaved hiking trails or the paved Upper Tampa Bay Trail, or both. Special thanks to Ross Dickerson, Division Manager Hillsborough County Conservation and Environmental Lands Management Division, who was instrumental in assisting with the research on this preserve. 

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