The Wild Edge: East Orlando’s Econ River Trails
A 7.4-mile greenway, 14 miles of campus wilderness trails and a nearby Oviedo river loop: three ways into the Econlockhatchee wild edge, ten minutes from Alafaya Trail.
3 minute read
Ten minutes east of the largest university in Florida, the pavement ends. East Orlando‘s wild edge is the Econlockhatchee — the Econ — a blackwater river system that threads the subdivisions and gives this side of town an outdoors life most suburbs would envy. Three trail systems, three different moods, all within a short drive of Alafaya Trail. Here is how they fit together.
The Little Econ Greenway: the everyday trail
Orange County’s Little Econ Greenway is the workhorse: a 7.4-mile paved trail running from the Alafaya Trail and Lokanotosa Trail area through Jay Blanchard Park to Forsyth Road, following the Little Econlockhatchee River the whole way. Visit Orlando’s listing and the county’s own materials agree on the shape of it — riverside recreation, picnicking, wildlife watching and canoe trails, with parking and access at Jay Blanchard Park (2451 N Dean Rd), the Econ Soccer Complex, Arcadia Acres and Harrell Road, plus a paved trailhead on the north side of SR-50 east of Goldenrod Road. Flat, paved and 14 feet wide in the county’s design, it is the area’s default for morning runs, family bike rides and dog walks that turn into something longer. Blanchard Park itself adds the picnic pavilions, playgrounds and sports facilities that make the Greenway a full morning rather than a pass-through.
The UCF Arboretum: the campus wilderness
The surprise entry is on campus. The UCF Arboretum manages 14 miles of nature trails through 20 unique habitat types — basin swamps and marshes, scrubby flatwoods, xeric hammock, wet prairie — on the east side of the main campus, across from Gemini Boulevard. The Arboretum’s own trail guide points visitors to the Lake Claire loop in the campus’s northwest corner, the Timothy R. Newman nature pavilion where Scorpius Street meets Gemini, and the East Parcel system, the university’s most remote natural area. One honest caveat from the Arboretum itself: these lands are managed with prescribed fire, so sections can close — check the trail maps before a long hike. For students, this is a wilderness between classes. For the rest of us, it is the easiest wild Florida in the city to reach.
Nearby: Econ River Wilderness Area
Just over the line in Oviedo — plainly a neighbor, not East Orlando proper — Seminole County’s Econ River Wilderness Area offers a 2.7-mile loop from a trailhead at 3795 Old Lockwood Rd, within walking distance of the campus sprawl yet built around a creek crossing under a full canopy. Florida Hikes lists it as free, open dawn to dusk, with leashed pets permitted and trails open to hiking, cycling and equestrian use. It is the deepest-woods option of the three, and the one where the river stops being scenery and becomes the destination.
On the water, and what you will see
The Econ system rewards slowing down. The county’s Greenway materials list canoe trails alongside the paved path, and Blanchard Park offers river access for fishing and paddling where the Little Econ widens — the tannin-dark water, sandy banks and overhanging canopy that define this river are all on display from the Florida Trail bridge country east of the suburbs. Wildlife watching is the official phrase, and it undersells it: wading birds along the banks, turtles on the logs, and a corridor of green that runs unbroken through one of the most built-up quadrants of Orange County. Bring the camera you would take to a state park; the river does not know it is in the suburbs.
How to run the three
Match the trail to the morning. Greenway for distance and pavement — ride it end to end and picnic at Blanchard. Arboretum for variety and the strange pleasure of hiking out of a campus parking lot into scrub flatwoods. Econ River Wilderness, labeled nearby in Oviedo, for shade and quiet. All three sit on our Top Spots Map, and all three explain the east side’s hold on its residents: this is the part of Orlando where a Saturday can start on a river trail and end at a ranked restaurant on the same road home — the full picture is in our East Orlando guide.
Photo: Omar Infante-Ramos, CC BY-SA, via Flickr.
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