The Best Things to Do in Ocoee, From Starke Lake to the West Orange Trail
A 22-mile rail trail, a championship golf course with no houses on it, spring blueberry picking and a lakefront festival lawn — the case for stopping in Ocoee, made stop by stop.
3 minute read
Ocoee’s reputation problem is simple: people drive through it on the way to Winter Garden or the theme parks and assume there is nothing to stop for. Spend a day testing that assumption and it collapses — a 225-acre lake in the middle of town, a 22-mile rail trail, a championship golf course with no houses on it, a working blueberry farm and a free music festival that draws tens of thousands. Here is the best of it, all inside or on the edge of the city; the full overview lives on our Ocoee hub.
Start on Starke Lake
Bill Breeze Park at 125 N. Lakeshore Drive is the city’s front porch: open field, gazebo, Veterans Memorial, fishing dock and the lawn that hosts Food Truck Fridays, Movies in the Park and the Ocoee Music Festival. Next door, Municipal Lakefront Park adds the boat launch and fishing pier. Fish it, paddle it, or simply walk the shore at sunset — our Bill Breeze Park guide covers the calendar in detail. A few steps inland, the Withers-Maguire House, built in 1888 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, adds the history stop; see our house and history piece.
Ride the West Orange Trail
The West Orange Trail runs about 22 miles from the Apopka side of Ocoee west through Winter Garden and Oakland toward Clermont, on old railroad grades through citrus country and small-town main streets. Ocoee’s northern neighborhoods give easy access — the Ingram Outpost trailhead sits on Sugar Magnolia Drive — and the ride west into downtown Winter Garden is one of the great short bike trips in Central Florida. Stations like Killarney, pictured here at the trail’s western end in Oakland, offer parking, restrooms and rentals. Go early in summer, carry water, and plan a food stop at either end.
Tee off at Forest Lake
Forest Lake Golf Club, on Clarcona Ocoee Road between Ocoee and Apopka, is the golfer’s argument for the city: an 18-hole, par-72 championship course opened in 1994, designed by Clifton, Ezell & Clifton across more than 218 acres of lakes, palms and live oaks — with, unusually for Florida, no homes lining the fairways. Five sets of tees stretch it past 7,200 yards from the back; a full-length grass range, practice greens and the Rusty Niblick Pub complete a proper daily-fee golf day, twenty minutes from downtown Orlando.
Pick blueberries, then catch a movie
In spring, Tom West Blueberries at 324 E. Orlando Avenue opens a working family farm — growing in Ocoee since 1954, converted from citrus to blueberries — to U-pick visitors, with buckets provided, weekend boat and tractor rides and a farm stand selling jams, honey and blueberry goods. It sits minutes from the lakefront, behind Ocoee Elementary, and the season runs roughly March into June; check the farm’s own page for picking days before you go. Year-round, the AMC West Oaks 14 at West Oaks Mall on West Colonial Drive is the city’s cinema — fourteen screens, easy parking and the relaxed crowds of a mall that no longer fights for shoppers.
And for the kids who never sit still
Vandergrift Central Park on Flewelling Avenue holds the Ocoee Action Sports Park — a 20,000-square-foot skate park and competition-level pump track, the only setup of its kind in West Orange County — alongside Little League fields and Bulldogs football. Prairie Lake Park, on Hackney Prairie Road, is the quiet counterpart: dock, nature trail and sand volleyball. Finish the day downtown with tacos and a brewery-yard sunset; where to eat in Ocoee has the list, and every stop here is pinned on the Orlando Top Spots Map.
The honest summary
None of these stops asks for a ticket window, a parking garage or a touring plan. That is Ocoee’s actual appeal: a lake, a trail, a golf course, a farm and a festival calendar, all priced for the people who live here and all within a few minutes of each other. Visitors who build a West Orange day around Winter Garden should add the Ocoee half rather than treating the city as the drive between stops — the lakefront alone justifies the detour, and the rest of this list is why locals insist the detour is the destination.
Photo: DanTD, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons.
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