Category: Founder Stories

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We Never Found the Big Oak

Big Oak Tree

I have wanted to hike the Big Oak Trail for years. The route is part of the larger Florida National Scenic Trail, a long-distance hiking trail that stretches more than 1,000 miles across the state. And it’s been described as one of the most scenic hikes in North Florida.

I grew up in this part of North Florida, not far from the Suwannee River, but I do not remember hearing much about the Florida Trail when I was younger. It certainly was not something I gave much thought to. It was only much later in life that I began to appreciate just how much there was to discover in the places I had grown up around.

I cannot remember when I first read about it, but somewhere along the way it became one of those North Florida places I kept meaning to see. I had read about this enormous old oak tucked into the woods near the Suwannee, and over time I probably romanticized it more than a little. I imagined finally coming around a bend in the trail and seeing it there, the kind of tree that makes you stop and stare because of how long it has been standing.

So when we finally set out to find it, I had the destination firmly in mind. When we reached the trailhead after parking, there was already some concern about what we had gotten ourselves into. Katie, especially, was looking at the overgrowth with considerably less optimism than I was. I was certain the trail would get better, and it did, somewhat.

The orange-blazed Florida Trail was passable and easy enough to follow, but there was still plenty of vegetation crowding the path. Even so, hiking along the Suwannee is rarely a bad way to spend a morning, and I was still convinced that once we got farther in, the trail would open up and the Big Oak would be waiting for us somewhere ahead.

Then we turned onto the blue-blazed trail that was supposed to take us to the Big Oak tree. At first, it still felt like a trail. Then it became less and less convincing. The farther we went, the more overgrown it became, until the woods seemed to be taking it back altogether. There were several points when turning around would have been the smarter decision. We did not. We kept going.

Eventually, we connected with the yellow-blazed trail, which felt almost luxurious compared with what we had just come through. We even started talking about how much better the yellow trail was than the blue one. Then we went off trail.

At some point, whatever confidence we had regained disappeared again. We wandered, checked our direction, second-guessed ourselves, and kept trying to make sense of where the trail should be. Luckily, we eventually found our way back to the orange-blazed Florida Trail. From there, it was only a short walk back to the car.

We never found the Big Oak. That should probably have been the disappointing part of the day. I had wanted to see it for years, and I had built the hike around finally reaching that one tree. But somewhere along the way, the tree stopped being the most important part.

Katie was with me, soldiering through sections of the hike she did not enjoy at all. There were definitely moments when I could tell this was not her idea of a perfect morning in the woods, but she kept going anyway.

Dennis and Frances were with us too. They are two of our closest friends, and they have already walked beside us through much harder things than an overgrown trail. They were there during one of the darkest health scares of my life, so getting a little lost in the woods together felt pretty minor by comparison.

At some point, I realized that I had spent years thinking about what it would be like to finally stand beneath the Big Oak, while I was already walking beside some of the people I care about most. That realization changed the way I thought about the hike.

We did not come away with a photograph beneath some enormous old tree. Instead, we came away with a story about a blue trail that got worse and worse, a yellow trail that briefly gave us hope, and the moment we somehow managed to wander off that one too.

Then there were the briars. Once we made it back to the car, we spent a good amount of time picking prickly little hitchhikers from our shorts and shirts, which felt like an appropriate ending to a hike that had not gone exactly according to plan.

And yet I would not call the day a failure. I still want to find the Big Oak. I suspect we will go back and try again someday, hopefully with a better idea of where we are going. But I had imagined this hike for years, and in almost every version of it the Big Oak was the thing that made the day worthwhile. I had that backwards. The tree gave us a reason to start walking. The people beside me were the reason the walk mattered.

Experience It

The Big Oak lies along a network of trails near the Suwannee River, with access from the Florida Trail and connecting blue-blazed and yellow-blazed routes. If you go looking for it, I would recommend carrying a reliable trail map and being prepared for sections that may be much less maintained than the main Florida Trail.

Even if you never find the tree, though, there is still something worthwhile about walking through this part of North Florida. The Suwannee winds through the woods nearby, and the landscape has a way of making even a wrong turn feel like part of the story.

If you are staying at Anasa, this is exactly the kind of outing that can fill part of a day without needing much of a plan beyond good shoes, water, and people you do not mind getting a little lost with.

Sometimes the destination gives us a reason to start. The journey is what we get to keep.

Postscript

Looking back through the photos later, I found one we had taken where we left the orange-blazed Florida Trail for the blue-blazed trail. The wooden sign plainly said “BIG OAK TREE,” with an arrow pointing toward the woods.

I think the tree may have been right there. I may have spent years wanting to find it, finally reached it, photographed the sign pointing to it, and then walked straight past it.

Which is especially funny because that was also the exact point where the hike began to go off the rails. We should have stopped, found the tree, admired it for a while, and headed back toward the trailhead. Instead, we kept walking.

— Dion, Anasa founder

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The Song That Made the Suwannee Famous

Upper Suwannee River

Stephen Foster never saw the Suwannee River, which may be the strangest part of this entire story. But for those of us who grew up around the Suwannee, it is a very real place. It is black water beneath limestone bluffs, springs spilling into the river, cypress knees along the banks, sandbars, shoals, ferries, and bridges. But for much of the country, the Suwannee became famous first as a line in a song.

In 1851, Stephen Foster wrote Old Folks at Home, the song many people would come to know simply as “Swanee River.” Foster was living far from Florida, and there is no evidence that he ever visited the river he made famous. The choice of the Suwannee was not the result of some memorable trip south or a personal attachment to this part of Florida. He was looking for a river name that worked in the song, and somehow he landed on the Suwannee. Even the spelling changed. Foster wrote it as “Swanee,” turning a real North Florida river into something that fit the rhythm of his music.

The song became enormously popular. By 1854, more than 130,000 copies had been sold, which was a remarkable number for the period. It spread through sheet music, performances, and eventually recordings, carrying the name of a river most Americans had never seen into homes far beyond Florida.

The Suwannee had existed for thousands of years before Stephen Foster wrote about it, but after 1851 it was no longer just a river. It had become an idea. People who had never visited North Florida knew the name Suwannee. Over time, the river became associated with longing for home, distance, memory, and the South itself. “Way down upon the Swanee River” became familiar even to people who could not have found the Suwannee on a map.

Eventually, Florida claimed the song as its own. In 1935, Old Folks at Home became the official state song, and White Springs eventually became the place where Florida chose to remember its composer.

That part of the story came much later. In 1931, Josiah K. Lilly proposed creating a memorial to Stephen Foster because his song had made the Suwannee River known around the world. The idea eventually led to the Stephen Foster Memorial at White Springs, which opened in 1950 and later became what we know today as Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park.

There is something wonderfully strange about that sequence. A man in Pennsylvania writes a song about a river he never visits. The song becomes famous. The river becomes famous because of the song. Nearly a century later, a town along that river builds a memorial to the man who wrote it.

Growing up here, I never thought much about any of that. The Suwannee was simply the Suwannee. It was somewhere we swam, fished, paddled, crossed, and drove beside. It was part of the landscape rather than something that had first entered the imagination of much of the country through a song.

And yet the song has always been there too. To this day, I sing it almost every time I cross the Suwannee. It does not seem to matter which bridge takes me across. Somewhere between one bank and the other, “Way down upon the Swanee River” usually makes an appearance.

I have probably done that hundreds of times without giving much thought to how strange it really is. A song written in 1851 by a man who never saw this river somehow became part of my own ritual for crossing it.

Only later did I realize that millions of people knew the Suwannee in exactly the opposite order. They knew the song first. For them, the Suwannee may have existed as a lyric long before it became a place. For me, the river came first, and the song simply followed me across it.

That may be what I find most interesting about this story. Names have a strange way of carrying places farther than geography ever could. Stephen Foster never saw the Suwannee River, but the song he wrote in 1851 helped make sure much of the world knew its name. Eventually, the river returned the favor by giving Foster a permanent home on its banks.

Experience It

Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park sits beside the Suwannee River in White Springs, a short drive from Anasa. Walk through the park, listen for the carillon from the tower, visit the museum if it is open, and then make your way down toward the Suwannee itself.

It is worth remembering that the river in front of you is the same one Foster chose from hundreds of miles away without ever seeing it.

If you are staying at Anasa, White Springs makes an easy half-day outing and pairs naturally with the Telford Hotel, the old spring house, and some time beside the river.

After spending the last few Field Notes exploring White Springs, there is still one question I want to come back to someday: Why did this little town become the place where Florida decided to remember Stephen Foster?

— Dion, Anasa founder

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The Spring That Built a Town

White Springs is a small town today. It was a small town then, too, at least by any national measure. But for a brief period around the turn of the twentieth century, it became something much larger than its population would suggest. The reason was the spring.

People came to White Springs to drink the mineral water, bathe in it, and seek relief from whatever ailments they believed the water might cure. They came by stagecoach and later by train. They stayed in hotels and boarding houses, ate in restaurants, shopped in town, and spent days or weeks beside the Suwannee.

The spring did not just give White Springs its name. For a time, it gave the town its economy. By 1910, White Springs had at least thirteen hotels and boarding houses. There were shops, entertainment, dining rooms, transportation services, and a growing resort economy built around visitors coming to take the waters. The town had 1,177 residents that year. Today, White Springs has fewer than 800.

That difference does not prove that the spring alone made or unmade the town. White Springs also had lumber, agriculture, railroads, and other industries that shaped its fortunes. Fire, changing travel patterns, highways, and the rise of other Florida destinations all played a part in what happened next.

Still, the numbers hint at just how much activity once revolved around the spring. At the center of it all was the spring house.

What survives today is a striking shell of what it once was. The old walls still rise beside the Suwannee, enclosing a place that once drew visitors from across the country. Historic photographs show crowds, bathing platforms, and an elaborate structure built around water that flowed with enough force to make the spring itself the centerpiece of town life. And that is where the story becomes harder to ignore. The spring barely flows now.

The first time you see the old spring house, it can be difficult to reconcile the ruins with the stories. You can understand the architecture. You can imagine the hotels. You can picture people arriving by train and walking toward the water. But then you look down. The thing that made all of this possible is barely there.

White Sulphur Spring once discharged large quantities of water from the Floridan aquifer. Over the twentieth century, that flow became weaker and less reliable. By 1977, the spring stopped flowing altogether for the first time on record.

The reasons are more complicated than any single explanation. Spring flow depends on pressure in the aquifer below us. Rainfall matters. Drought matters. So does groundwater pumping. And in White Springs, there is another part of the story just north of town.

The phosphate mine opened in the 1960s, and groundwater associated with its operations has long been pumped from the same regional aquifer system that feeds springs like White Sulphur. Later groundwater modeling found that phosphate pumping had a measurable effect on White Springs, and that removing that pumping in the model allowed spring flow to recover significantly.

That does not mean every gallon pumped by the mine would otherwise have come bubbling out of White Sulphur Spring. Groundwater does not work that neatly. But it does mean the connection is more than speculation.

Part of me wants the answer to be simple. Shut down the mine, let the aquifer recover, and see whether the spring that made White Springs famous could flow again. I would love to see that happen.

But I also grew up in this part of North Florida, and I know the other side of that equation. The phosphate industry has provided generations of jobs across Hamilton, Suwannee, and the surrounding counties. Members of my own family have worked there. So have the families of people I grew up with. For a rural community, those jobs are not an abstraction.

That does not make the loss of the spring less important. It does not mean groundwater impacts should be ignored. It simply means the question cannot honestly be considered in a vacuum. I can wish the spring flowed the way it once did and still understand why the answer is more complicated than simply closing the gates at the mine. That may be the part of White Springs’ story I find most interesting now.

The town was once built around a natural feature powerful enough to shape its economy, its identity, and the way outsiders saw it. The spring house still stands. The spring itself is barely a trickle.

The strangest thing about visiting the old spring house today is that the building outlived the water it was built around. And yet the story is not completely finished. White Springs is still here. So is the spring. The question now is what both of them become next.

Experience It

The old spring house sits beside the Suwannee River in White Springs, a short drive from Anasa and close to Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park.

Walk down to the spring house and spend a little time there before heading toward the river. Look at the walls, the scale of the enclosure, and the old photographs .

Then look at the water that remains. It is one of the clearest places in North Florida to see how dramatically a landscape can change while the structures around it remain.

If you are staying at Anasa, White Springs makes an easy half-day outing and pairs naturally with a walk through Stephen Foster, a stop at the Telford Hotel, or a drive along the Suwannee. This is one of those places where the story becomes easier to understand once you stand inside it.

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The Last Hotel Standing

The Telford Hotel

White Springs once had more hotels and boarding houses than you would ever guess from driving through today.

At the height of its resort years, visitors came for the mineral spring, for the promise of health, and for the kind of social life that made this little town on the Suwannee feel much larger than it was. They stayed in hotels, took the waters, walked the town, and gathered around a spring that had become famous well beyond North Florida. Most of those hotels are gone now. The Telford is the one that stayed.

Construction began in 1902, during the height of White Springs’ resort era. The hotel was associated with William Butler Telford, and it stood out because it was built differently. While so much of the town was still wood, the Telford was White Springs’ first masonry hotel, built with red brick framing around pale, irregular stone.

That stonework is one of the things I like most about the building. It has always reminded me of the surviving masonry ruins at Suwannee Springs. There, another resort town had already learned how vulnerable large wooden hotels could be. A huge wooden hotel burned in 1884 and was replaced by a smaller brick-and-stone hotel. That second hotel burned in 1901, just before construction began on the Telford.

I have found no evidence that the two hotels shared a builder, materials, or any direct connection. But they belonged to the same era and the same river country, and both reflect a time when permanence was beginning to matter.

The Telford’s timing was fortunate. In 1911, fire swept through White Springs and destroyed more than thirty buildings, including four hotels, businesses, homes, and the high school. The Telford survived. That alone would have made it unusual, but the building’s real story is not simply that it escaped one fire. It is that people kept finding reasons for it to remain useful.

Over the years, the Telford served not only as a hotel but also as a nursing home, private residence, restaurant, bed-and-breakfast, and even the headquarters of a broadcasting company. Each new use gave the old building another chance to survive while so much of the White Springs resort era disappeared around it.

By 1910, White Springs had at least thirteen hotels and boarding houses. Today, the Telford is the only historic hotel from that boom still standing. That is what makes the building more than just an attractive old structure. It is one of the few places where you can still physically see the White Springs described in old advertisements and newspapers.

There is another reason the name caught my attention. My favorite spring in North Florida is Telford Spring, named for Reverend William Brazelton Telford. My favorite old building in White Springs happens to carry the same last name.

The hotel’s William Butler Telford and Reverend William Brazelton Telford even shared the same first name and middle initial, and both appear to have come from the same broader South Carolina Telford family. They were likely related, although I have not yet been able to document exactly how. For now, it is one of those family-history threads that is visible enough to notice, but not quite clear enough to tie into a neat knot.

The Telford was also part of the same experience that brought people to White Springs in the first place. Visitors came to drink the mineral water, bathe in the spring, seek treatments, and stay in town while they did it. The hotel opened just as White Springs was transforming its spring facilities into the elaborate spring house that would become the town’s centerpiece.

The hotel was where people stayed. The spring was why many of them came. Even some famous names passed through. An old guest register from 1913 includes the names of former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, a reminder that White Springs once attracted visitors from far beyond this part of Florida.

That is difficult to picture now, which may be exactly why I like the Telford so much. It gives the imagination something solid to work with. You can stand in front of it and see the stone, the brick, the porches, and the scale of the building and understand that White Springs was once a very different place.

And the story is not entirely finished. White Springs is once again asking what the Telford might become next. I have caught myself wondering the same thing. An old hotel in a historic spring town is exactly the sort of thing I should probably appreciate from a safe financial distance. Still, it is hard not to imagine what a place like this could become with the right kind of care. For more than a century, people have kept finding new reasons for the Telford to survive. I hope they find one more.

Experience It

The Telford Hotel stands in the historic center of White Springs, a short drive from Anasa. It is close to the old spring house, Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, and the Suwannee River, which makes White Springs an easy half-day outing during a stay.

Walk past the hotel, continue toward the old spring house, and then down toward the river. Try to picture the streets filled with visitors moving between hotels, shops, porches, dining rooms, and the spring itself.

White Springs is one of the easiest places near Anasa to experience the kind of North Florida I keep writing about: a place where the history is still visible if you slow down enough to notice it. The Telford is one of the best places to begin.

Stay nearby, explore slowly.
Anasa is a nature hotel near Live Oak, created for weekends built around places like this.

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When White Springs Was Famous

It is difficult to look at White Springs today and imagine what it once was. The town still sits quietly beside the Suwannee River, surrounded by the same North Florida woods that have always defined this part of the state. Drive through today and you might notice the historic buildings, the entrance to Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park, or the old spring house beside the river.

What is harder to imagine are the crowds. There was a time when people traveled to White Springs from across the South specifically to spend their vacations here. They arrived by stagecoach and later by train, checked into hotels and boarding houses, dressed for dinner, attended dances, shopped along the streets and, most importantly, came to drink and bathe in water that they believed could make them well.

Long before Florida tourism meant beaches, theme parks or winter condominiums, people were already coming here. They came for a spring.

The Water That Started It

The sulfur spring beside the Suwannee had been known long before there was a town around it. Local traditions describe Indigenous people regarding the spring as a place of healing, and later settlers inherited the belief that its mineral-rich water possessed medicinal qualities.

By the early 1800s, those claims were spreading well beyond North Florida. The water was promoted as a treatment for ailments ranging from rheumatism and kidney problems to nervous disorders.

It sounds strange through modern ears, but mineral-spring tourism was a serious business in the nineteenth century. People traveled great distances to places where they believed the water could restore their health.

In the 1830s, Bryant Sheffield acquired the spring and ferry crossing and eventually built a hotel and spring house beside the water. What began as a rural spring on the Suwannee was becoming a destination. Florida State Parks describes White Springs as Florida’s first tourist attraction, and a USGS history calls it the state’s first tourist destination.

A Resort Town on the Suwannee

By the late nineteenth century, White Springs looked very different from the quiet town we know today. Visitors first arrived by stagecoach, but the railroad made the town much more accessible. Hotels and boarding houses multiplied as travelers came for the water, the climate and the chance to spend days along the Suwannee.

By the 1880s, visitors could choose from roughly 500 hotel and boarding-house rooms. Later accounts describe a town with luxury hotels, shops, dining, dances, tennis, skating and other entertainment built around the resort trade.

Try to picture that the next time you drive through White Springs. Instead of quiet streets, imagine travelers stepping off trains with luggage. Imagine hotel porches filled with guests escaping the heat of the day. Imagine people strolling toward the spring dressed for an afternoon in a resort town.

At the center of almost everything was the water. The spring eventually became surrounded by an elaborate multi-level bathhouse. Visitors could change clothes, be examined by physicians and descend toward the water from galleries surrounding the spring. The surviving concrete and coquina structure dates to the early twentieth century, although what remains today is only part of what visitors would once have seen.

We will come back to that spring house in another Field Note, because it deserves a story of its own. So does one of the hotels.

The Town the Spring Built

What interests me most about White Springs is how completely one natural feature shaped the town around it. The spring created the destination. The visitors created demand for hotels, restaurants, shops and entertainment. Transportation followed the visitors, and an entire local economy grew around the idea that this particular water was worth traveling to experience.

For a while, White Springs was exactly the kind of place people pictured when they thought about taking a restorative trip to Florida. Then tastes changed. By the 1930s, Americans were losing interest in mineral-spring cures, and the resort culture that had supported White Springs began fading with them. The hotels disappeared one by one, and the crowds that had once filled the town largely stopped coming.

White Springs did not disappear like Columbus or Ellaville. Instead, it became something quieter. That may make the traces of its former life even more interesting, because so much of the old town is still there if you know what you are looking for.

Experience It

The best way to begin exploring this story is simply to walk around White Springs with the resort era in mind. Visit the old spring house beside the Suwannee and imagine it filled with people who had traveled there specifically for the water. Walk through the historic part of town and notice the older homes and buildings that remain from an era when visitors arrived with trunks instead of overnight bags. Then stand for a while beside the river.

It is hard to reconcile the quiet of White Springs today with the town that once welcomed thousands of visitors seeking health, recreation and a few days away from ordinary life.

That contrast is exactly what makes the place worth knowing. Before Florida became famous for beaches, amusement parks and sunshine, one of its first tourist destinations was a small town on the Suwannee River. And it all began with a spring.

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The First Cool Morning

Fall arrived on the calendar earlier this week, but to me, this morning North Florida finally felt like it.

For the first time in months, I stepped outside and the air was unmistakably different. It was not cold, and by most standards it probably was not even especially cool, but after a long North Florida summer, it felt like a change.

The heat had backed off. The humidity had loosened its grip. For once, stepping outside did not feel like standing on the face of the sun. I did not need to check the temperature to know it. The first cool morning had arrived.

Fall Arrives Differently Here

In other parts of the country, fall seems to announce itself more dramatically. Leaves change color, jackets come out, and the air turns crisp enough that there is no mistaking the season. North Florida is more subtle.

The change usually begins in the mornings, when the air feels a little lighter and the heat no longer presses down quite as hard. Before long, the evenings begin to change too. You stay outside a little longer. The sunlight seems softer. Familiar places start to feel different simply because being outside is comfortable again.

The afternoons may still remind us that summer has not completely disappeared, but something has shifted. This morning was the first time I really felt it.

The Season You Feel Before You See

Fall in North Florida is often something you feel before you really see it. The trees do not suddenly transform overnight. Instead, the signs arrive gradually. The morning air cools, the evenings become more inviting, and the light begins to sit a little lower in the sky.

After a long summer, those small changes matter. You start thinking about drinking coffee outside again, taking longer walks, eating dinner beneath the trees, and eventually lighting the first fire of the season. The woods begin to feel less like somewhere you pass through quickly and more like somewhere you want to stay for a while.

Nothing about the landscape has changed dramatically since yesterday. Yet this morning, the same place felt different.

Why the First Morning Matters

I think the first cool morning feels important because summer lasts so long here. For months, we plan around the heat. We look for shade, retreat inside during the hottest part of the day, and wait for the season when being outdoors becomes easy again.

Then one morning, almost without warning, the air changes. The day will probably warm up later. We may even get another stretch of hot weather before fall really settles in.

But that does not take anything away from this morning. For a little while, summer loosened its grip. And after waiting for it, I noticed.

Experience It

If you are reading this on the morning it arrives, go outside before the day warms up. Make a cup of coffee and sit somewhere quiet. Listen to the woods. Notice the air against your skin and the way familiar places feel slightly different after months of heat.

There is no need to turn it into a hike, a trip, or something to accomplish. Sometimes the experience is simply staying outside a little longer than you normally would.

Fall rarely arrives in North Florida all at once. Sometimes it arrives on an ordinary Thursday morning, when you open the door and realize the air has finally changed. Today was that morning.

— Dion, Anasa founder

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The Towns That Disappeared

On opposite sides of the Suwannee River, two towns once faced each other. One sat on the east side of the Suwannee, near what is now Suwannee River State Park. The other grew across the river, near the meeting of the Suwannee and Withlacoochee. Columbus came first. Then Ellaville rose. For a time, both existed together. And eventually, both disappeared.

Today, if you drive through the area, you mostly see woods, river and old roads. It takes some imagination to understand that this quiet corner of North Florida once held two communities, each important in its own time.

Years ago, when my son was still little, I took him out on the trails at Ellaville hoping we might find the ruins of George Drew’s mansion. We never made it that far. He had had enough walking, so we turned around. Now he is off at college, and I still remember how peaceful and beautiful those woods felt. A few years later, in 2019, I stopped and photographed the historical marker beside the road. In large letters, it says:

THE TOWN OF ELLAVILLE

Looking back at that picture now, what strikes me is how little of a town you can see behind it. There are trees, Spanish moss, grass and the familiar woods of North Florida. But Ellaville was not the first town here.

Before Ellaville, There Was Columbus

Columbus developed on the east side of the Suwannee in the early 1840s. Its location made sense because several different ways of moving through North Florida came together there. River traffic, ferries, stagecoach roads and mail routes all converged around the crossing, and later the railroad added another layer of importance.

Columbus became a place where cotton, goods, people and information moved through the region. Steamboats traveled the river. Stagecoaches connected the community with other settlements. A ferry carried people across the Suwannee.

By the Civil War, the railroad crossing was important enough that Confederate earthworks were built nearby to help defend it. For a while, Columbus seemed well positioned to last. Then a new town began growing across the river.

Ellaville Rises

After the Civil War, George Franklin Drew established a large sawmill and manufacturing operation on the opposite side of the Suwannee. North Florida was covered in yellow pine, and Drew built an economy around it. A town grew around the mill.

For several years, Columbus and the new settlement existed across the river from one another. One was an older transportation and river community. The other was a newer industrial town built around timber. Then the center of gravity began to shift.

In 1867, the Columbus post office was moved across the Suwannee to serve the growing sawmill complex, although it kept the Columbus name for a few more years. In 1872, the post office officially became Ellaville. By the early 1870s, Columbus had largely faded. Ellaville had taken its place.

George Drew built a substantial home there in 1868. Less than a decade later, he became governor of Florida. That detail helps me understand the scale of the place. Ellaville was not simply a small settlement beside a mill. For a time, it was one of the more important communities in this part of North Florida.

As Long as the Yellow Pine Lasted

Ellaville’s historical marker tells its story with an unusually simple sentence:

“Ellaville flourished as long as yellow pine lasted.”

There is almost an entire history of North Florida contained in those words. The forests that created Ellaville’s prosperity were also finite. As the surrounding timber was cut, the economic reason for the town began to disappear with it.

Ellaville declined after 1900. People left. Businesses closed. Houses vanished. The post office survived into the 1940s, but the town’s real boom had ended long before then. George Drew’s mansion remained standing after much of Ellaville had faded. Photographs from the twentieth century show the once-impressive house slowly deteriorating before it disappeared around 1970. The woods kept moving back in. Just as they had around Columbus before it.

What Stayed

Not everything disappeared. At Columbus, traces remain inside Suwannee River State Park: the cemetery, earthworks, old roads and places where people once approached the river. At Ellaville, the landscape is full of its own clues.

One of them is Suwanacoochee Spring. I remember paddling the Suwannee one day and passing the spring where its water enters the Withlacoochee. I was moving parallel to the shoreline when the outflow hit the side of my kayak hard enough that it nearly tipped me over.

That was my introduction to Suwanacoochee before I understood much about its connection to Ellaville. The walls around the spring are still there. The town is gone. The spring is not. Nearby, scattered ruins, old pathways and the landscape itself tell the same story in different ways. Once you know what was here, the empty spaces stop feeling quite so empty.

Two Towns, One River

What I find most interesting is how quickly the whole sequence happened. Columbus rose first, built around movement: ferries, stagecoaches, river commerce and later the railroad. Then Ellaville rose across the river, built around timber, manufacturing and transportation.

For a while, both towns existed at the same time. Then Columbus faded. A few decades later, Ellaville began fading too. Two towns rose along the same stretch of river, one after the other, and neither lasted very long.

The river stayed through all of it. The Suwannee and Withlacoochee kept flowing while one community rose, another replaced it, and eventually both disappeared back into the landscape.

That is one of the things I have come to love about exploring North Florida. Sometimes the most ordinary-looking woods are not ordinary at all. Sometimes they are the remains of one town. Sometimes two.

Experience It

This is a good place to explore as a pair. Start at Suwannee River State Park and look for the traces of Columbus: the cemetery, old roads and earthworks. As you walk, think about the stagecoaches, ferries and river traffic that once made this a crossroads.

Then walk across the old U.S. 90 bridge over the Suwannee into Ellaville. The bridge itself came much later than either town, but crossing the river on foot gives you a physical sense of just how close these two communities were.

On the Ellaville side, stop at the historical marker and walk the trails toward the Drew Mansion ruins. Find Suwanacoochee Spring near the meeting of the Suwannee and Withlacoochee and notice the walls still surrounding part of the water.

Neither place gives up its story immediately. That is part of what makes them worth visiting. You have to slow down, look carefully and imagine what is no longer there. Two towns once occupied this stretch of river. Now the river is what remains.

— Dion, Anasa founder

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I Knew Sheck Exley Before I Knew Who He Was

For years, Sheck Exley existed in my memory as one of my high school math teachers. He was eccentric, interesting, and hard to forget. He had sayings he seemed to keep ready for almost any situation, including one I still remember clearly: “It’s my way or the highway.”

I knew he was involved in karate. I knew he had a personality that could fill a classroom. What I did not know was that he was also one of the most accomplished cave divers in the world. At the time, I had no idea.

The Blackboard

I remember one day in his class when he had students come to the blackboard to work algebra problems. When my turn came, I was feeling pretty confident. The equation looked easy, so I walked quickly to the board, worked it out, and was already prepared to enjoy being right. Except I wasn’t.

I had made some stupid little mistake. Sheck responded with one of those funny sayings he always seemed to have ready. I wish I could remember exactly what he said. Whatever it was, I remember slumping back into my seat, slightly embarrassed and already biding my time until I could get another chance to demonstrate my brilliance.

Looking back, what strikes me is that he could have skewered me. I had walked to that board with enough teenage arrogance to make myself an inviting target. He could have made the mistake hurt a lot more than it did. Instead, he showed me some grace and let me sit down. That is the Sheck Exley I knew then.

Meeting Him Again

Some years after high school, I was at the house of a friend of a friend when I noticed one of Sheck’s books sitting on the coffee table. I picked it up and starting looking through the book. And pretty much stopped participating in whatever everyone else was doing.

I sat there reading about cave exploration and underwater passages hidden beneath the North Florida landscape I had grown up around. The more I read, the stranger the experience became. This was Sheck Exley, my math teacher. Except it felt like I was reading about someone I had never met.

The person in those pages seemed almost entirely new to me. I had sat in his classroom. I knew his sayings. I knew about the karate club. I had even had my own small encounter with his sense of humor at the blackboard. But I had no idea how much of his life existed somewhere else entirely.

A Modern-Day Explorer in Our Own Backyard

What makes that realization even stranger is how often his story now intersects with places that were already part of my own life.

Telford Spring was one of those places. I spent countless childhood afternoons there, swimming through the limestone opening beneath the natural bridge and never imagining how far the cave system extended beyond what I could see. Years later, I learned that Sheck was one of the divers involved in exploring and surveying those passages.

Peacock Springs is another. My dad took my sister and me there long before it became a state park, back when the dirt road through the woods was part of the adventure. Today, Peacock is known around the world for its cave system, and there is a plaque there honoring Sheck.

Then there is Falmouth, another spring with an enormous hidden world beneath what looks like a small patch of water at the surface.

The more I learn about these places, the more often his name appears.

We tend to imagine explorers as people from another century, crossing oceans, climbing mountains, or disappearing into blank spaces on old maps. But Sheck was a modern-day explorer working right here in our own backyard, pushing into underwater passages beneath North Florida that most people would never see.

It is an odd feeling to keep encountering someone years after they are gone.

Someone I Had Never Met

Sheck died in 1994 while attempting an extraordinarily deep dive in Mexico. By the time I really understood the scale of what he had accomplished, he was already gone.

That is probably why the coffee-table book memory has stayed with me. I was not discovering a famous cave diver who happened to share a name with one of my old teachers. I was discovering that one of my old teachers had been this person all along.

There is something humbling about realizing how little we may know about the people sitting right in front of us. I knew Sheck Exley. And in another sense, I did not know him at all.

Experience It

If you visit Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park, look for the plaque honoring Sheck Exley. Then walk the interpretive trail that follows the cave system beneath the woods. From the surface, the landscape looks quiet and ordinary: pines, oaks, sandy trails, and patches of water tucked into the forest. But beneath your feet is another world.

That was the world Sheck spent so much of his life exploring. And if you want to understand him beyond the plaque, find one of his books and read it.

That is how I first discovered the other Sheck Exley. Years after sitting in his classroom, I picked up one of his books from a coffee table and found myself completely absorbed in the story of a modern-day explorer I had somehow already met.

For me, Peacock connects those two versions of the same person: the eccentric math teacher I remember from a classroom and the explorer whose name I now keep finding beneath the places I grew up around.

Sometimes we discover hidden stories in landscapes. Sometimes we discover them in people. And sometimes it takes years to realize just how much was there all along.

— Dion, Anasa founder

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The Spring That Feels Like Home

My dad took my sister and me to Telford Spring so often when we were kids that it almost felt like our backyard pool. I can still picture the old oak tree overlooking the spring, with my boombox propped against it playing cassette tapes filled with whatever 80s music I was into at the time.

My dad was not especially cautious about the water. I remember him teaching one of my cousins how to swim by throwing him into the cold spring and letting necessity handle the lesson. My cousin figured it out pretty quickly.

We always stayed there for hours. Long enough that the cold water would eventually get to us, and we would swim out into the Suwannee for a while just to warm up before getting back in the spring.

One of my favorite things to do was turn the spring into a challenge. I would dive in, swim through the cave beneath the limestone bridge, then keep going down the spring run toward the river, all underwater, just to see how far I could make it on one breath. At the time, I had no idea how much more water and limestone existed beyond what I could see.

For most of my childhood, Telford was simply a place we went. We swam, listened to music, and spent enough time there that it stopped feeling like somewhere we visited and started feeling like somewhere that belonged to us.

For all those years, though, I never really wondered who Telford was.

The Name Behind the Spring

The man behind the name was Reverend William Brazelton Telford, a Presbyterian minister who came to this part of North Florida around 1864, during the final years of the Civil War, and became associated with the Luraville area.

We know the spring came to bear his name. What is harder to recover is exactly why. Some accounts suggest he may have owned or homesteaded land in the area, but I have not found enough to say with confidence that the spring itself was part of his property. I have also found later memories of baptisms taking place at Telford, but nothing that proves Rev. Telford himself performed them there.

That uncertainty is part of what interests me. Perhaps the connection once seemed so obvious to the people living here that nobody thought it needed to be written down. More than 150 years later, the name has survived more clearly than the story behind it.

Sometimes history does not remain as a building or monument. Sometimes it survives because people keep saying a name.

The World Beneath Telford

As a kid, the little cave beneath the limestone bridge felt like the hidden part of Telford. It turns out I barely knew the beginning of it.

Beneath the spring is an underwater cave system extending far beyond the small passage we swam through. Cave divers spent years exploring and surveying those passages, eventually connecting Telford with other parts of the underground system beneath the surrounding landscape.

One of the people involved in that early exploration was Sheck Exley. That name means something different to me than it does to most people who know the history of cave diving. Sheck was one of my high school math teachers.

At the time, I knew him as an eccentric and interesting teacher who liked to say, “It’s my way or the highway.” I knew he was involved in karate. I did not understand the other life he was living beneath the waters of North Florida.

I would not learn until much later that he had helped explore places like Telford. By then, he had already been my teacher and had tragically passed away. I had known the teacher. I had known the spring. I simply had no idea, at the time, how closely those two parts of my world were connected. That is another story.

A Place Can Hold More Than One Life

The older I get, the more I realize that familiar places can hold stories we never knew were there. Telford was part of Rev. Telford’s North Florida. Later, it became part of Sheck Exley’s underwater world. And for me, it was part of childhood. The history does not replace any of those memories. It adds layers to them.

I can learn about the preacher whose name survived. I can look at maps of cave passages that extended far beyond anything I imagined as a kid. I can understand now that one of my teachers had explored beneath a place where I spent countless summer afternoons.

But when I picture Telford, that is still not what I see first. I see the oak tree. I hear cassette tapes playing from a boombox. I see my sister nearby and my dad at the spring.

Experience It

On one side of the limestone bridge is a small opening where I used to jump in the water. From there, you can swim through the short cave beneath the rock and emerge into the main spring. The water turns cold around you almost immediately.

Then look down the spring run toward the Suwannee, where the clear spring water meets the darker river. If you stay in the spring long enough, you may even understand why we sometimes climbed into the river just to warm up.

Before you leave, follow the trail back to the parking lot, walk to the left, and down into the nearby sinkhole. It connects into the larger Telford cave system, a reminder that what you see at the surface is only a small part of what is beneath you.

Then come back to the spring and sit beneath the oaks for a while. It is not a large place. It is not polished. It does not need to be.

Places become important for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes because of the history attached to them. Sometimes because of the people who explored them. And sometimes because someone you loved took you there again and again.

The water is still cold. The limestone is still there. And for me, so is my dad.

— Dion, Anasa founder

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The Name in the Woods

My dad started taking me to Peacock Springs long before it became a state park. Back then, at least in my memory, it felt like little more than a dirt road disappearing into the woods.

That road was part of the adventure. It rolled up and down enough that my sister and I treated it like a roller coaster, sitting on the back of my dad’s MGB while he drove faster over the hills than I would probably recommend today.

At the end of the road was Peacock Springs. I knew the name long before I ever wondered where it came from.

Today, Wes Skiles Peacock Springs State Park still feels surprisingly wild. It is not polished in the way some Florida state parks are. The roads are simple, the woods grow close, and the springs seem tucked into the landscape rather than built around.

There is something almost primordial about it.

And yet, on almost any visit, you are reminded that this quiet patch of North Florida is known far beyond North Florida. Cars in the parking area carry license plates from around the country. Sometimes you hear accents from other parts of the world.

They have come because beneath these woods lies one of the most extensive underwater cave systems in the country. But long before Peacock became a name known among cave divers, it was the name of a family.

Before the Divers Came

Dr. John Calvin Peacock came to this part of Florida from North Carolina in the years before the Civil War and settled near the springs that would eventually carry his family name.

The Peacock family built a life here. They farmed a large tract of land, raising cattle and growing crops, while Dr. Peacock practiced medicine throughout the surrounding countryside.

It is easy today to picture a doctor working from an office or hospital. In rural North Florida in the nineteenth century, the job looked very different. A country doctor might travel for miles by horse or buggy to reach someone who needed him.

The roads would have been rough. The communities were scattered. Much of the landscape between them was still forest.

Somewhere in those woods, the Peacocks built their home and raised their family. And eventually, they buried members of that family there.

The Cemetery

Not far from the springs is the Peacock family cemetery.

For many years, it became overgrown enough that it nearly disappeared back into the woods. Later, the cemetery was restored and marked, preserving one of the clearest physical connections between the family and the landscape that now carries their name. I like that the cemetery is still there.

The springs have become famous for something the Peacock family could never have imagined. Divers now travel thousands of miles to explore passages deep beneath their former land. Maps show miles of underwater cave extending beneath a landscape that, from above, still looks mostly like woods. But the family remains there too.

Their name appears on park signs, maps, cave surveys and dive logs.

Most people who say “Peacock Springs” probably never stop to wonder who Peacock was. For most of my life, I didn’t either.

A Name Can Outlive a Place

That has become one of the things I notice more often as I learn the stories of North Florida. Names survive. A ferry disappears, but Charles Spring remains. A preacher passes through a community, and generations later his name may still be attached to a spring.

A family settles beside a patch of woods in the nineteenth century, and people from around the world eventually travel there carrying dive tanks beneath a sign bearing their name.

The places change. The reasons people come to them change.

But sometimes the name stays.

I wonder what Dr. Peacock would think if he could stand near the spring today and watch divers preparing to disappear beneath the water.

He probably would not recognize much of what they were doing. But he would recognize the woods. And he would certainly recognize the name.

Experience It

One of the best ways to experience Peacock Springs is to walk the interpretive trail that follows the cave system beneath the ground.

From the surface, it looks like a walk through ordinary North Florida woods. But beneath your feet are miles of flooded passages twisting through the limestone. The trail helps connect the landscape you can see with the one you cannot. That changes the way you walk through the place.

The woods stop feeling like empty space between the springs. You begin to understand that there is another landscape directly below you, hidden beneath the roots and soil.

While you are there, look for the plaque honoring Sheck Exley, one of the pioneers of modern cave diving.

That plaque has a different meaning for me because Sheck was once one of my high school math teachers. At the time, I knew him as an eccentric and interesting teacher who liked to say, “It’s my way or the highway.” I knew he was involved in karate. I did not fully understand that he was also helping explore and map the underwater world beneath places like this.

That is a story for another Field Note. For now, walk the trail slowly.

Think about the Peacock family who lived here before the park existed. Think about the divers who later came to understand what was hidden below. Then look around at the same woods that have been here through all of it.

The Peacock family gave this place its name. Generations later, people like Sheck Exley helped us understand what was hiding beneath it.

And once you know both stories are there, the woods feel a little different.

— Dion, Anasa founder