Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park
| Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park | |
|---|---|
Entrance signage
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| Type | Municipal |
| Location | 12451 SW 184th St., Miami, Florida |
| Coordinates | 25°35′55″N 80°23′55″W / 25.59861°N 80.39861°WCoordinates: 25°35′55″N 80°23′55″W / 25.59861°N 80.39861°W |
| Area | 270 acres |
| Created | 1977 |
| Operated by | Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation Department |
| Open | All year |
| Website | Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park and Campground |
The Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park is the largest park/campground in Miami-Dade County (Florida).
The park, adjacent to Zoo Miami, totals 270 acres (of which 60 acres is dedicated to camping). It is located in southwest Miami, two miles west of the Florida Turnpike's Exit 13 between SW 134th Ave. and SW 122nd Ave. on the north side of Eureka Drive (SW 184th St.).
The park has a 22-acre lake, picnic shelters, restrooms, bike trails and horse trails. The 60-acre camping area has 240 RV sites and a heated pool. There’s additional space for tent camping. The campground office has a permanent historic display. It includes Larry Thompson’s 1941 Remington Noiseless Portable Typewriter he used to write his Miami Herald columns while on cross-country camping trips with his family, plus family photos and memorabilia.
Larry Thompson was a humor columnist for the Miami Herald for more than two decades until his death February 18, 1973. He is in the Florida Newspaper Hall of Fame. His wife Gladys "Penny" Thompson (née Rhodes), who died September 22, 1975, was a pioneer in women’s aviation during the 1940s-1950s. She was the Florida chapter president of the Ninety-Nines, the women’s pilot organization founded by Amelia Earhart. While in the Civil Air Patrol, she flew over the Gulf of Mexico searching for German submarines during World War II. Her plane was one of several hundred destroyed in a 1945 blimp hangar fire at the Richmond Naval Air Station, part of which was rebuilt as the park.
The Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park was originally part of the Richmond Naval Air Station which came into existence when the U.S. federal government acquired by eminent domain 2,107 acres of undeveloped land On September 15, 1942 it was commissioned as a base for U.S. Navy blimps in World War II to help protect ships on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico from German submarine attacks. On September 15, 1945, three years to the date the base was commissioned, a hurricane and subsequent fire destroyed all three 17-story wood hangars and everything inside: 366 military and civilian aircraft, 25 blimps and more than 100 vehicles.
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