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Fun on the Mermaid Tale Trail along Florida’s Adventure Coast
Weeki Wachee has long been home to the Weeki Wachee mermaids and in 2022, the park celebrated its 75th anniversary. To aid in the celebration, the Mermaid Tale Trail was scheduled for a grand kickoff, but Mother Nature had a different plan. Hurricane Ian devastated the Port Charlotte area, and the festivities had to be put on hold… but…
The Mermaid Tale Trail is a long dreamt of public art project sponsored by Florida’s Adventure Coast Visitors Bureau, Brooksville Main Street, and the Hernando County Fine Arts Council. The idea was to create life-sized mermaid statues to be painted by commissioned artists throughout Hernando County along a trail of sorts for locals and visitors to enjoy.
Tammy Heon, Manager of Tourism for the County, found the right company to create the mermaid statues, and Kristy, a real Weeki Wachee mermaid, would have her face cast to add authentic beauty to each piece. Read the whole story here.
The Mermaids Come to Life from Artist Visions
Meanwhile, a call was made for artists to submit their visions for painting a mermaid for the trail, and each sponsor chose their artist based on the submitted concept drawings.
After the statues were created, they were brought to Brooksville for distribution, and the process of bringing each mermaid to life began.
NatureCoaster sponsored a mermaid called Nico and the Velvet Underwater, which was painted by Jesse Kasabian. She is on display at Anderson Snow Park where thousands of children visit and stop to get their photo with Nico. She is a beautiful addition to the area, as are her many sisters throughout Hernando County, from Bayport to Richloam.
Watch Jesse’s story of creating Nico:
Each mermaid has a theme and a story. The creativity that goes into each one can be seen on the Florida Mermaid Trail website at https://floridamermaidtrail.com/tale-trail/
There is a fun, hand-drawn map of the entire trail available for download or you can pick one up at the Brooksville Bandshell offices. The map is adorable, with each mermaid’s story on the back, but it wasn’t drawn to scale and would be hard to follow while driving, so I went for a drive to meet all 27 local mermaids using the Mermaid Tale Trail digital passport.
Using the Mermaid Tale Trail Passport to Travel the Public Art Trail
It was a simple 1-2-3 process to order my Mermaid Tale Trail Passport from the website.