Learning Campus

A hub for park visitors, K-12 students, rotating researchers, and park staff, the Gulf State Park Learning Campus rounds out the park’s offerings through its classrooms, laboratories, flexible meeting spaces and lodging options. Built on a previously developed area in an evergreen forest, the Campus demonstrates sustainable building practices and cultivates stewardship through interactive environmental programming. Site design of the Campus encourages visitors to park the car and use a pedestrian core, creating various experiences amid native longleaf pines and live oaks. The Student Lodge, equipped with 64 bunk beds and 2 private rooms, and a Community Restaurant are a short walk-in-the-woods away from Classrooms and a 200-seat Auditorium, the Park’s primary learning destinations for exhibits and formal research. Connected by boardwalks and characterized by screened porches nestled under the trees, the classrooms provide learning opportunities everywhere.