Wakulla Springs is a first magnitude spring, the largest classification there is, and a major exposure point for the Floridan Aquifer. It sits 14 miles south of Tallahassee and 5 miles east of Crawfordville, protected inside Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.
What comes out of it becomes the Wakulla River, which runs 9 miles southeast to join the St Mark's, and after another 5 miles that river reaches the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachee Bay. Behind the spring is Wakulla Cave, a branching flow-dominated cave developed in the aquifer beneath the Woodville Karst Plain of north Florida.
The reason it matters beyond hydrology is what is lying on the bottom. In 1850 Sarah Smith reported seeing the bones of a mastodon down there, and scientific interest in the spring dates from that moment. Since then the remains of at least nine other extinct mammals from the last glacial period have been identified, some deposited as far as 1,200 feet back into the cave.
They are still there and still visible. At a depth of about 190 feet the fossilised mastodon remains are in full view along with other fossils, which makes this one of the very few places where Pleistocene megafauna can simply be looked at where it fell.
The cave system behind the spring is one of the longest underwater caves in the world and has been the subject of decades of exploration by cave divers, work that is genuinely dangerous and has been carried out in stages over many years.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
