A Spring So Deep, It Swallowed Mammoths
The water here comes from a hole in the Earth so deep that divers still haven’t mapped the bottom. The main spring at Wakulla Springs shoots up from a limestone cavern system that’s been filtering Florida rainwater for centuries. Before Spanish moss ever draped a live oak, before conquistadors or Seminoles or Civil War gunboats, this spring already existed—steady, cold, and bottomless.
It’s 70 degrees year-round, clear enough to count the scales on a garfish, and deep enough to swallow whole histories. The bones of mastodons, giant sloths, and even prehistoric humans have been pulled from its depths. And yet somehow, the water keeps coming.
This isn’t just a state park. It’s a time machine.
Old-Florida Ambience, Right Down to the Lobby
Most state parks don’t come with a Mediterranean Revival hotel built in 1937. But Edward Ball, the industrialist who bought up the land in the 1930s, wasn’t after just another retreat—he wanted to build a monument to purity and order, and he did it in Spanish tile and cypress beams…