Travel Articles

There’s a place in Florida where you might find 5,000 people – that’s not a typo – 5,000 floating down the river on a hot summer day. This place, Ichetucknee Springs State Park, is in the heart of the Suwannee River valley, and it’s one of the most popular tubing spots in the world.

In fact, geologists say this place in Florida, the Suwannee River valley, may have the largest concentration of freshwater springs on Earth. It has more than 200 springs, and no place else in the world even comes close to that. The 700 springs in Florida are one of the state’s most important recreational treasures.

And they’ve been there for a long time. For thousands of years, native Floridians used them for food, water and weapons, made from clay on the bottom. Ponce de Leon, searching for the Fountain of Youth, is said to have been intrigued by subterranean freshwater discharges in central and northern Florida.

When colonists started to arrive, this place in Florida served as locations for Spanish missions, steamboat landings, grist mills and post offices. The springs were used for baptisms, drinking water and irrigation. A few springs gave birth to towns. They include Silver Springs (Marion County), Green Cove Springs (Clay County) and DeLeon Springs (Volusia County).

In the early 1900s, people important and unimportant flocked to resorts at several springs, seeking their healing powers. These included White Springs (Hamilton County), Panacea Mineral Springs (Wakulla County) and Warm Mineral Springs (Sarasota County).

A few springs are privately owned, but most are in federal, state and county parks. Swimmers, boaters, wildlife observers and cave divers flock to them to use their facilities. They include Blue Spring (Madison County), Ichetucknee (the tubers’ favorite in Columbia County) and Blue Spring (Volusia County). Florida has so many springs, in fact, that it long ago ran out of names. So at least 14 of them have the word blue in their name. The 15 Florida state parks named for springs attract more than two million visitors a year, contributing nearly $7 million in revenues annually.

Ginnie Springs (Gilchrist County) is the most popular freshwater diving location in the world.

The size of a spring is determined by the amount of water it discharges. If it’s a lot – say, at least 100 cubic feet of water per second – it’s called a first magnitude spring. Currently (the number keeps growing as measuring methods improve) Florida has 33. The total outflow of these 33 is said to likely exceed the flow of all of the rest of the world’s springs – combined. The largest in Florida? The best answer is: It depends. It depends on the parameters used to define big, and it depends on the criteria. By most yardsticks, Spring Creek in Wakulla County is the biggest. Others, in order, are Crystal River (Kings Bay), Silver, Allapaha Rise, St. Marks Rise and Nutall Rise.

Why does this place in Florida have so many springs? Why not Nebraska or Nevada? The complex answer can be found only in a technical paper written by a geologist. So that’s another story for another day.

So you think you’d like to go tubing on the Ichetucknee River on a hot summer day? Get in line. Tubers splash in from three starting points. One is a 3-hour trip; another is 90 minutes; and a third is 45 minutes. But only 750 persons each day are allowed to float the sensitive, shallow north portion of the river.

By Gene Ingle

2009 Gene Ingle. You may reprint this article on your site, blog, autoresponder, etc., so long as you leave all the links in place including the link to http://www.gipublications.com – and do not edit or modify the content.

Gene Ingle, an expert on places to see in Florida, is an award-winning writer-cartographer who has driven nearly a million miles in Florida researching places on maps you probably never heard of. This place in Florida is one of 213 featured in ‘The Famous Florida Trivia Game’ available at http://www.ebookserendipity.com – Test your knowledge. It’s fun and it’s free.