Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park

Dedicated to the memory of the late Larry and Penny Thompson , civic leaders, camping enthusiasts and advocates of park beautification, the Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park and Campground is the largest campground in Miami-Dade County (Florida) with 240 full hookup RV campsites plus tent camping.

The entire property, which is adjacent to Zoo Miami, totals 270 acres (of which 60 acres is the campground). It is located in southwest Miami, Florida, two miles west of Exit 13 on the Florida Turnpike between SW 134th Ave. and SW 122nd Ave. on the north side of Eureka Drive (SW 184th St.).

History The land was originally part of the Richmond Naval Air Station built in 1944 and used as a base for U.S. Navy blimps during World War II. On September 15, 1945, three years to the date the blimp base was built, a hurricane and subsequent fire destroyed all three 17-story wood hangars and everything inside: 466 military and civilian aircraft, 25 blimps and more than 100 vehicles.

A connection to the World War II past is evident today at the south entrance to the park off SW 184th St., where a large concrete directional arrow still stands in the grass, pointing north – a guide for blimp and airplane pilots who landed at the Naval Air Station.

With the war over, the blimp base ceased operations. The hangars were never rebuilt and the blimps never returned. The parcel for the Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park and Campground was acquired in 1974 as part of a 1,010-acre land transfer from the U.S. government to Miami-Dade County.

In late 1975, then 21-year-old Carl Thompson lobbied the Miami-Dade County Commission to name the park after his parents who had recently died.

Larry Thompson was best known as a beloved humor columnist for the Miami Herald for more than two decades until his death in 1973. He is in the Florida Newspaper Hall of Fame. His wife Penny, who died in September of 1975, was a pioneer in women’s aviation during the 1940s-1950s. She was the Florida president of the 99s, the women’s pilot organization started by Amelia Earhart and she organized international women’s air races and published an aviation newspaper. In the Civil Air Patrol, she flew over the Gulf of Mexico searching for German submarines. Her plane was one of those that perished in the 1945 fire, near the park and campground that today bear her name.

On November 17, 1975, the Miami-Dade County Commission unanimously voted to name the park the Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park and Campground.

The campground was dedicated on December 17, 1977. The late Gene Miller, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for the Miami Herald, represented the paper at the dedication and presented a bronze plaque donated by the Herald. Today, the plaque is at the front of the campground office. The plaque quotes from Larry Thompson’s February 3, 1956, Herald column: “All types of parks are needed in this complex civilization of ours, and we don’t have enough of any of them. Providing a place where a person can just sit --- where he can commune with God’s world – certainly is and always will be a primary requisite.”

On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew, devastated the park and campground, severely damaging most of the picnic shelters and other buildings and flattening many of the trees. However, within a few years, the damage was repaired and the trees recovered.

Amenities The campground offers full hookups for RVs, restrooms with hot showers, laundry, cabana and heated pool. During the winter months, the campground is filled to capacity with RV campers mostly from the northern United States and Canada. The campground is a 30 minute drive from the Everglades National Park entrance, three hours from Key West and 30 minutes from Miami Beach. There’s additional space for tent camping.

The park features a 22-acre fresh water lake and large slides, plus picnic shelters, five miles of bike trails and 2.5 miles of horse trails.

The campground office has a permanent historic display with 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. These items were donated to the campground by Carl Thompson in December of 2012 as part of the 35th anniversary of the campground’s dedication.

The park and campground contain some of the last portions of wilderness in Miami-Dade County, with wildflowers, palmettos and rock pinelands in abundance. Once part of post-World War II agricultural research by the University of Miami, groves of avocado, mango and lychee fruit trees still flourish throughout the property.