Strange and Mysterious Waters

At Wakulla Springs State Park, a wildlife sanctuary and lodge just south of Tallahassee, tradition reigns and time stands still.

by John Branston
photography by Beth Maynor Young

Sweet Tea Journal (Spring/Summer 2006) – Five minutes into a trip down the Wakulla River, the passengers on the River Cruise tour boat get an unexpected surprise. A pair of manatees are swimming in the shallow water, and when veteran guide Luke Smith turns off the motor they come right up to the boat and rub their Smurf-like snouts against its side as a dozen digital cameras record the moment.

“Untamed, untrained, unstuffed, they’re reee-yull,” Smith says several times during his heavily accented spiel describing the alligators, snakes, deer, anhingas, herons, ospreys, snowy egrets, and moorhens that usually are seen during a typical cruise. Amateur photographers don’t need a telescopic lens to get stunning pictures at Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park. At this wildlife sanctuary and lodge, tradition reigns and time stands still—literally, because there are no clocks or televisions in the guest rooms. Whether it’s a serving of Wakulla’s signature oyster casserole, a rocking chair on the terrace overlooking the lawn, or the nostalgic sound of big-band music in the dining room, the emphasis is always on doing things the Wakulla way.

The exact origin of the name Wakulla, which some pioneers called Wakally or Wakully, is unknown. The popular interpretation is “strange and mysterious waters.” As Smith and other guides say, “We all know where this water is going, but we don’t know where it comes from.” Fifteen miles south of Tallahassee, Wakulla Spring is the world’s largest and deepest freshwater spring with a single vent. When it’s running clear, passengers on the glass-bottom tour boat can look down sixty feet and see a scattering of mastodon bones, a “catfish convention,” or a signature attraction known as Henry the pole-vaulting fish. They also can take the River Cruise tour and see a variety of wildlife at close range.

“Life is good when you’re a big alligator along the Wakulla River,” says Bob Thompson, another boat guide. “The birds and alligators have grown up around these boats, so they go about their everyday behavior. When I come out here in a solo kayak on my day off, they won’t let me get this close.”

The spring from which the river flows is 185 feet deep in its main cave, with an opening 85 feet wide and 55 feet tall that discharges an average of 400,000 gallons of water per minute. The river that it creates runs southwest for 9 miles from the 6,000-acre park until it reaches the Gulf of Mexico.

Since 1937, divers at Wakulla Spring have explored miles of the park’s cave system. Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan on the banks of the river, diving from a fifty-foot tower into the spring. Soldiers staged mock battles and trained for amphibious warfare during World War II. Scenes for the movie Creature from the Black Lagoon were filmed here in 1954. Bathing beauties of the 1940s and 1950s held underwater picnics in front of newsreel cameras. Tourists tossed coins over the sides of boats and watched them drift to the sandy bottom. And Old Joe the alligator and Henry the pole-vaulting fish became famous.

Visitors to Wakulla Springs today can enjoy the forty-five-minute guided boat tours, swimming beach, trails through hammocks of beech and magnolia trees, and abundant wildlife that have made it one of the most popular parks in northern Florida for nearly seventy years. On land, they can explore trails and possibly see such animals as wild turkeys, deer, and—if they’re lucky—bobcats. Other springs in the park are accessible too, such as Sally Ward Spring, located near the park entrance, and Cherokee Sink, a rustic swimming hole about two miles from the lodge.

There are more than fourteen kinds of freshwater fish. Neotropical songbirds migrate to Florida’s Big Bend region in the spring, including the rarely sighted limpkin that was once plentiful in Florida. The long-legged, long-necked, crane-like marsh bird is brown with white spots and streaks. Yet it’s the limpkin’s call for which it is best known in many circles—its eerie, shrill call is heard mainly at night and sounds like a human in distress, earning the limpkin the nickname “crying bird.”

Then there’s the creature that seems to be everyone’s favorite, the manatee. Ron Weiss,Wakulla Springs assistant park manager,  says manatees first appeared at Wakulla Springs in the 1990s. Many biologists believe they’re attracted to the Wakulla River’s plentiful vegetation, including hydrilla, which, growing as much as an inch a day, is a coastal river’s version of kudzu. And it’s believed the manatee herd based in the Homosassa and Crystal rivers, which are farther south along the coast, has moved into the St. Marks and Wakulla rivers in recent years.

“I wouldn’t say they have taken up residence, but they are now being sighted more frequently,” Weiss says. “We don’t know exactly why. Strange and mysterious waters, I guess.”

While not certain of its origins, scientists believe that ninety percent of the spring’s outflow comes from the Floridan aquifer, an underground reservoir, and the rest from local sources. The drainage basin of the aquifer that feeds the spring extends as far north as the three southern counties of Georgia. The four-acre natural pool—formed by the mouth of the Wakulla Spring—offers an entrance for skilled divers who must be part of an approved scientific research team. And while the end of the spring has never been reached, about twelve miles of the cave’s tunnels have been visited since scuba exploration began in the 1950s. Some tunnels reach depths of three hundred feet below the surface, requiring divers to spend five minutes in special decompression stops in the cave for every minute spent at the spring’s lowest levels. Fossilized remains of prehistoric animals have been found several hundred feet inside the cave, suggesting that it may have been dry during the last ice age.

Its crystal-clear waters literally put Wakulla Spring on the map. General Andrew Jackson’s men did a topographical survey of the spring in 1818, taking time out from an expedition, the main objective of which was to avenge an Indian attack on the Apalachicola River. With the establishment of the area’s first American settlement in 1824, Tallahassee residents began visiting it as a health resort. Throughout the nineteenth century, scientists, travelers, poets, and writers were fascinated by the spring. The 1850 discovery of mastodon bones sparked a wave of publicity. And by 1870, the spring was being used for baptisms and picnics.

Serious efforts to commercially develop Wakulla Spring began in 1925, when George Christie of Jacksonville bought the spring and 270 surrounding acres for $14,000. The annual picnics became political rallies. More mastodon bones were discovered in 1930, and Christie put them on tour. But the Depression forced him to sell, and the property eventually was bought by Edward Ball in 1934.

Ball, who died in 1981, was an important and controversial figure in twentieth-century Florida history. Upon Alfred DuPont’s death in 1935, Ball took charge of the trusts set up in DuPont’s will, which controlled business ventures like the St. Joe Paper Company. Historians have called Ball one of the most powerful political brokers of his time. He oversaw the details of the lodge’s design and construction and spent a great deal of time living there and entertaining guests. He supervised the planting of white azaleas and camellias; one of his greatest pleasures was driving in the spring through what he called “Wakulla in white.”

He also was wild about wildlife. One of Ball’s favorite pastimes was riding the tour boats down the river and counting the alligators and limpkins while making bets with his guests as to the final tally. When Old Joe the alligator was killed in 1966, he insisted the carcass not be moved from the bottom of the spring until he arrived from Jacksonville. He had Old Joe stuffed and put inside a glass display case near the dining room, with a note that said the “legendary reptile” was estimated to be at least two hundred years old and “had never molested man, woman, child, or pets.”

It was during Ball’s lifetime that the park also became the setting for Tarzan’s Secret Treasure and Tarzan’s New York Adventure. Filmed in 1941 and 1942, both starred Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, and, of course, Cheeta the chimp. The cabbage palm where Tarzan bellowed his famous call is a highlight of the River Cruise to this day. During World War II, servicemen from nearby Camp Gordon Johnston practiced amphibious warfare on the grounds and in the spring, making thirty-two-foot leaps from the diving tower into the water. Weissmuller went them one better with a fifty-foot dive.

Also in the 1940s, Ball hired a swimming instructor named Newt Perry as general manager. Perry pioneered the use of underwater breathing stations that enabled him to choreograph and film campy hot-dog roasts, boxing matches, and picnics using synchronized swimmers such as the famous Tarpon Club women’s team from Florida State University. One of the lifeguards Perry hired was a Tallahassee high-school student named Ricou Browning, who became a good diver and actor in the skits. After a stint in the United States Air Force, Browning was contacted again by Perry, who had friends interested in making a movie at Wakulla Springs called Creature from the Black Lagoon. While giving a tour, Browning’s underwater swimming, unusual one-armed stroke, and ability to hold his breath for a long time impressed the camera crew. Two weeks later, he was offered the role of the “Gill-Man” creature in the underwater scenes. Browning doesn’t have a line in the movie, but it made him something of a cult idol and led to success in movie and television production and underwater stunt coordination. Browning, who lives near Fort Lauderdale, has returned to Wakulla Springs in recent years for film festivals on the grounds and a showing of Creature from the Black Lagoon.
In 1963, Ball leased the property to the National Audubon Society as a bird sanctuary, and in 1966 he created the Edward Ball Wildlife Foundation with the mission of preservation and scientific research. The state purchased the property and lodge in 1986 and turned it into a state park.

Great care has been taken to preserve the original look of the Mediterranean-style guest lodge. Built in 1937, it has marble walls and floors, hand-painted cypress ceilings, an old-fashioned soda fountain, and wrought-iron railings with designs of native birds. In the elegant but comfortable dining room, where big-band music is a constant, tables are covered with white tablecloths, burgundy napkins, and the original Syracuse china—a discontinued pattern that must be specially ordered. Dishes include oyster casserole, fried chicken, and navy bean soup, made from recipes handed down from chef to chef for generations.

“That’s ... the way we’ve always run,” says sales manager Janet Chernoff. “We’re more of a getaway than a resort.”

With no televisions in the guest rooms, entertainment inside the lodge includes marble checkerboards on tables in the lobby beneath nostalgic color images of  Wakulla’s halcyon days. And a glass case holds the stuffed remains of Old Joe, which was displayed in the dining room until shortly after Ball’s death.

Back outside, Henry the pole-vaulting fish is still one of the park’s star attractions. He performs a trick that may seem pedestrian compared to the river’s leaping mullet. Yet consider that for most of the park’s history, when the glass-bottom boats arrive, Henry and his ancestors have kept flopping over an underwater pole in the spring. Boat guides think Henry’s behavior may have something to do with the sound of the boat’s motor, but the mystery is all part of the fun, and its regular occurrence over the years continues to delight park visitors and staff alike. With tongue firmly in cheek, boat guide Gavin says Henry is “mostly a bass, but he’s got a lot of relatives down there who give him some relief.”

Based on such simple pleasures, Wakulla Springs has become a widely known tourist attraction, and today painstaking efforts are made to honor the traditions of the good old days, from the rocking chairs on the terrace to the butterfly garden to the stamp machine next to the registration desk.

On a recent Sunday, the lodge was nearly full and scores of people were sunning on the beach, diving off the platform into the spring, or eating hand-scooped ice cream cones from the lodge’s soda fountain. The quiet drone of a football game on someone’s radio seemed a thousand miles away. On the other side of the spring, an alligator even bigger than Old Joe lay impassively on the bank in the low grass. And as Smith says, “Untamed, untrained, unstuffed, he’s reee-yull.”