Inside the Florida park where nudity was mandatory and Black people were barred

The Florida Naturist Park is now for sale, priced at $2.5 million, but its story stretches far beyond a simple real-estate listing. Hidden in a wooded pocket of Pasco County, the park once promised a radical form of freedom. It offered residents a place to live without clothes and away from mainstream judgement. That freedom, however, came with rigid boundaries. Nudity was mandatory for participation, and Black people were explicitly barred from owning property. Those rules shaped everyday life inside the community and continue to complicate efforts to sell it today.Founded in 1959, the park was the vision of Thomas Ward Gulvin, a self-styled naturist preacher who believed social nudity represented moral purity. “A devotion to naked life was required,” Gulvin insisted in interviews during the park’s early years. He was equally blunt about exclusion. In 1969, he told a reporter that allowing Black residents would drive customers away. Decades later, those beliefs still shape the park’s fate as its current owners search for a buyer willing to inherit both the land and its history.Florida Naturist Park differed sharply from most nudist resorts of its time. This was not a clothing-optional retreat where visitors could choose their level of participation. Residents and long-term members were expected to practise social nudity as part of daily life. Communal spaces such as lakes, beaches and clubhouses were designed around the assumption that everyone would be nude. Remaining clothed without reason drew attention and, at times, confrontation.Gulvin enforced this culture with intensity. In one notable case, he sued a resident who refused to undress, arguing that clothing violated the spirit of the community. He lost in court, but the message to others was unmistakable. Nudism was not symbolic or recreational. It was a condition of belonging.“This wasn’t casual naturism,” said Brian Hoffman, author of Naked: A Cultural History of American Nudism. “It was an attempt to organise an entire social system around nudity as a belief, not just a leisure activity.”If nudity defined how people lived inside the park, race defined who was allowed in at all. Gulvin barred Black people from owning property and wrote those restrictions directly into the deeds. He defended the policy publicly long after segregation had ended elsewhere in the country. His reasoning was blunt and unapologetic. Integration, he argued, would drive away paying members.Former residents later described a founder who was rigid in his thinking and resistant to change. Frank Shepard, who lived in the park for years, recalled Gulvin’s worldview plainly. “He thought Black people would move in and everybody would move out,” Shepard said. “He was stuck decades behind the rest of the country.”Those restrictions remained in place into the late 1980s, leaving a legacy that still shadows the property.Despite its rigid rules, Florida Naturist Park flourished in the late 1950s and 1960s, a period when American nudism was closely tied to fitness culture and postwar ideas of natural living. Bodybuilders, models and photographers became regulars. Sunshine Beach Club emerged as the social heart of the community, with nude swimming, sunbathing and sports as daily rituals.Membership reportedly peaked at around 2,000 people. The park even entered popular culture. In 1963, a low-budget film titled Naked Complex was shot on the grounds, drawing curiosity and controversy in equal measure. Gulvin preached the virtues of nudism from a converted bus and later from a small church on the property, framing the park as both a physical and spiritual refuge.Supporters described it as a pilgrimage site for believers in natural living. Critics saw something more troubling beneath the surface.Public attention brought problems. Over the years, the park became associated with drownings, theft complaints, police investigations and lawsuits. One of its lakes was the site of a fatal accident. In another incident that drew headlines, a large python kept on the property went missing, prompting safety concerns and ridicule.At the same time, social attitudes toward nudity were shifting. The sexual revolution made public nudity less shocking, while isolated nudist colonies began to feel outdated. Many people preferred beaches or more relaxed, clothing-optional resorts. Remote communities like Florida Naturist Park began to age, both in infrastructure and membership.“Many of these older camps are dying off,” Hoffman said. “They were built for a very specific moment in American culture, and some carried far more controversy than others.”Gulvin suffered a stroke in 1990 and died in 1994. Control of the park passed to his children, none of whom practised nudism or shared his ideological commitment. Without a single guiding figure, the community fractured. Roads grew overgrown. Trailers aged. Disputes among residents increased as maintenance declined.In 2003, a developer offered a potential lifeline, proposing to buy the property and reinvent it as a Christian nudist resort. The plan sparked fierce resistance from residents, who feared losing control of their homes and lifestyle. Lawsuits followed. The deal collapsed, leaving the park more divided and distrustful of outside intervention than before.Today, what remains is a fragmented property of about 58 acres, dotted with lakes, an ageing clubhouse and residents who own their individual lots and refuse to leave. The land is zoned exclusively for nudism, limiting redevelopment options. “We don’t have the expertise to run a nudist colony,” said Gulvin’s son Art, explaining why the family decided to put the property on the market.The timing is ironic. Pasco County is booming, with new housing developments pressing up against the park’s boundaries and property values climbing sharply. The location is attractive. The zoning and history are not.