Dade Battlefield Historic State Park is a great place to start your career at being a volunteer workamper in our Florida State Parks. Since they do not have campsites for visitors then you are called a Residential Host. This little park encourages local people to join the Dade Battlefield Society so they have a pool of volunteers for as many of their historically themed events.
Mostly, it is a lot of grunt work where they help set-up for events, participate actors and demonstrators, help with parking or just help clean-up afterwards. We were offered the position of “special projects” volunteers while we were there. Which started out with us painting the new Park Ranger’s House before he and his family arrived. Let me tell you that was a learning experience for my Mom and I.
In between painting, we were asked to participate with the Pioneer classes that the Volunteer Coordinator had once a month. Sometimes we would demonstrate how to make corn-husk dolls or sit at the gatehouse and collect the entrance fees. When we arrived, there were two other Residential Hosts as singles, one is a carpenter and regular handyman and the other was an electrician, handyman and worked cleaning bathrooms and maintained all the equipment and buildings.
They also did most of the set-up and clean-up before and after each of the events. Later another two volunteers came in and helped with the lawn maintenance and the park activities. The last month of our stay a family arrived and they split the gatehouse and events participation duties with us.
The park had spaces for 6 RVs and were getting full when we left because their major event of the year was the Seminole and American Soldier Battle. The state wants these little parks to host more paying activities and this one does a lot already. While we were there they had the Kids Pioneer Crafts Festival, the Haunted Halloween Hayride, Christmas Pioneer Crafts Festival and Pioneer crafting classes each month along with the regular ranger programs. The local schools even had the kids come in from the ROTC to practice orienteering. (They got to spend the weekend)
They do have regular visitors that come in to walk the paths, kids to play on the playground, weddings and photographers taking pictures of the large oak trees. Our first event was the Kids Pioneer Crafts Festival. There were over 350 home-schooled, public and private school children running around and between each of the booths learning about pioneer life. Mom was sick that day and couldn’t help me. The very next day I felt like I had the flu and was down for a couple of days.
For the Pioneer Haunted Hayride the park borrowed a couple of trams from Weeki Wachee Springs State Park to run everyone around the park. There was a Seminole War Party Dancing next to the fire, a black clothed old saw bones cutting off body parts, a pioneer family yelling and running around, moaning ghosts from the battle in the woods and next to the stream, a gun firing pioneer coming out at you in the dark and a little old pioneer woman ghost stuck in an outhouse.
There were a lot of people coming through that night. This was the first time I drove a truck with a trailer behind me. I was so afraid I was going to run off the little bridge but it wasn’t me who did. (ha, ha, ha – no one was hurt) That was after mom and I had created about 400 sandwich bags with sand and candles then placed them all along the paths to light the trails. The next day going around picking all of those up was fun.
The final event was the Pioneer Crafts Event where mom and I helped the participants to make more corn husks dolls. Don’t forget that each of these events we had to dress up in some sort of costume. The other volunteers helped the participants to make rag dolls, clothes pin dolls, carve soap, punch tin candle lights into cans and much more. There was square dancing, holiday music and lots of different crafts being made throughout the whole front part of the park.
In between all these events we also were encouraged to hop up on the large mower and mow some of the 40 acres of grass. Of course, the front of the park is pretty well worn down so when you mow you get a lot of dirt and grit. Some of the other areas underneath the large oak trees have large populations of mushrooms so you had to wear one of those hepa-mask. But with my headphones hooked up to my MP3 player and a tank full of gas I can mow the heck out of those areas. I did have to look our for baby rabbits hiding in the taller grass areas. It was fun but hard work.
The Benefits
As a Residential Volunteer at Dade Battlefield Historic State Park you get a nice campsite with water, electric and sewer; access to a large freezer and refrigerator space, washer and dryer and, when they work, a golf cart for running back and forth. In exchange you only need to work around 20 hours per week per couple. They give you three days off and the work is varied to say the least. They have an extra shower inside the garage shop with lots of hot water and terrific water pressure but it is only a single and created as an after thought.
The new manager was really nice and has been in the State Park system for a while. He wants to use more residential volunteers all year round. But, of course, with the budget crunch they are in danger of loosing the residential volunteers they already have or have them severely limited. That is so sad because the park only has the one manager, two park rangers and a volunteer coordinator to run the park, interact with the visitors, keep the park cleaned and maintained and man the visitors center.
The Visitors Center
The visitors center is quite special. It is well worth a look if you should ever visit the park. They have relics from the 1800s, information about the battle and the area as well as a short movie to watch. That is all included with the price of admission of $3 per car load. If you are in the Bushnell area stop by and check out the park.
Check the Volunteer Opportunity Portal
One thing I encourage every person who wishes to volunteer workamp in the Florida State Parks is the check the Volunteer Opportunity Database. It is a place to start to get general information and perhaps to find out there critical needs area. However, the individual parks are STILL NOT utilizing this resource for obtaining volunteers. Contacting the parks directly is always a good idea if you do not see any listings on the search panel.
Quick Tip: Take out the date and just click the “SEARCH” button. That will bring up every listing and you can sort it by the name of the park.
Update 2023 from the Volunteer Coordinator
Jolene
Thanks for reaching out to us. We still have resident volunteer positions-reduced to five now. In general we can fill fall and winter easily but the spring-summer (when we need mowing) are the hardest to fill. I don’t have different job descriptions just a general resident volunteer position that does everything from cleaning bathrooms, park maintenance and working with festival and events. Our gatehouse is mostly self service now. We ideally like some handyman type of volunteers mixed with craft and interpreter type volunteers. Hope this helps, thanks for helping in this process. Kristin 08/14/2023
Dade Battlefield Historic State Park
7200 Battlefield Pkwy
Bushnell, FL 33513-6828
Website: https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/dade-battlefield-historic-state-park
Phone: (352) 793-4781
Email: Kristin.N.Wood@dep.state.fl.us
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