Here's a rare look inside the OLF 8 property. Wetlands and woods offer picturesque view.

While Escambia County is rethinking how they want to sell the 540 acres of Outlying Landing Field 8, I am thinking about its greatest asset: the grass, wetlands and woods on the western side of the site.

Many of us who live in Beulah were drawn to this place by its rural nature, the trees, wildlife and outdoor recreation. Assets like that can bring others to what we call OLF 8, for the active as well as passive outdoor recreation and the views we have grown to love – even from our cars. That is the kind of amenity that can cement us as a unique place, one based in nature that will contribute to our quality of life and position us for commercial success.

Nature-based amenity that will bring success

Ed McMahon, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute and my favorite CivicCon speaker, spoke on the value of natural assets at a CivicCon meeting in Pensacola several years ago. I remember he said the highest dollar real estate in the New York City area was that adjoining Central Park – because it is on that park.

Ed McMahon: CivicCon: Why go anywhere if it all looks the same?

In his 2017 Virginia Town & City story, “Why some places thrive and others fail,” McMahon wrote that successful cities and towns share some strategies: They identify their greatest assets, protect them and organize development around them. The unique identity they project sets them apart from other places, creating a reason to go there. It takes a whole community to do that, he wrote, and people have to know and understand something before they will value it, preserve it and further enhance it. So I decided to bring a place many of us treasure closer to you.

We have a game-changing amenity on OLF 8, a natural place with rare wildlife and roads into three circular, grassy oases in the middle of the woods.  They are like a world apart – nature, great just like it is.

Hiking across OLF 8’s grasslands to the western woods and wetlands

I started hiking from the Navy Federal Credit Union’s public park across the OLF 8 field, past bobbing Black Medic and the occasional small bird toward the western forest.

On this map from a Navy report, you can see the western forest, wetlands, three clearings in the woods and a small, square box in the grass next to a point in the forest. That was my first destination.

That box marks the Pinnacle Landing Pad. Helicopter pilots once practiced on the big earthen mound to prepare for when they might have to partially land on a spot too small for a full landing.

From there, in spring, I walked further southwest past blueberry blossoms.

Three oases-like grass clearings surrounded by forest

There are three “oasis” clearings in the forest where pilots learned how to land in a confined space in the forest. The circular, grassy areas southwest of the Pinnacle Landing are surrounded by woods except for the roads in. You can hear birds and traffic in the distance, but even hearing that, I felt an unusual, solitary stillness.

The first road on the right goes into what I am calling the “First Oasis.”

Take the road to the left to enter the “Second Oasis.” It is quite close to the wetlands south of it.

The “Third Oasis” is the deepest into the woods and feels the most remote, just you and the trees there.

Watch a video here taken from the middle of the third Oasis. https://photos.app.goo.gl/vn8pzafZn3vHZQPH7

This photo from inside the third oasis shows blackberries, a Gopher Tortoise food, in the foreground. They were in bloom when I was first there.

I hiked back out from the oases and went further south along the forest edge. This map marks where the endangered Gopher Tortoise burrows have been located previously.

As I walked, the Golden Dragonflies were teasing me to catch them in a photo, lighting long enough for me to try and fail, but I did get this one.

The forest was thick as I walked toward the tortoise burrows

One Gopher Tortoise burrow on the edge of the woods was marked, then I discovered an impressive, new burrow further south in the grass that was not marked. The average length of a burrow is 15 feet, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They lay their eggs in the soft sand surrounding their burrow, FWC says, and can live 40 to 50 years in the wild.

After hiking back, I visited the wetlands on West Nine Mile Road. No wildlife to be seen that day, but I had seen Canadian Geese there a few days earlier.

Then the sun dipped down over West Nine Mile Road.

On a later trip, I settled in with takeout at the Navy Federal  park and watched the sun set on OLF 8.

How you can make a difference

The zoning of the western woods, wetlands and grass is “Conservation” and “Civic” in the DPZ CoDesign master plan that more than 800 of us helped to create and the county adopted into code. That means the land is to be preserved or used for public uses like a park with an amphitheater, a community garden, facilities like police and fire stations, a library or a good community center. But one of the potential developers has already said he wants to build residential on the Civic-zoned land and the county is considering making changes to the master plan.

Show up at BCC meetings, speak and write emails. Tell the commissioners to preserve our western conservation and civic land, the DPZ master plan and its Design Code. Beulah’s future will be bright if the county has the foresight to preserve our greatest amenity and stick to the DPZ master plan.

Theresa Blackwell is a former reporter/photojournalist with The St. Petersburg Times, now known as Tampa Bay Times. She is an advocate for the Beulah community and a CivicCon founding member.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: OLF 8 wetlands and woods offer picturesque view in Beulah