De Leon Springs State Park
| De Leon Springs State Park | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
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| Location | Volusia County, Florida, USA |
| Nearest city | DeLeon Springs, Florida |
| Coordinates | 29°08′24″N 81°22′08″W / 29.14000°N 81.36889°WCoordinates: 29°08′24″N 81°22′08″W / 29.14000°N 81.36889°W |
| Established | 1970 |
| Governing body | Florida Department of Environmental Protection |
De Leon Springs State Park is a Florida State Park in Volusia County, Florida. It is located in DeLeon Springs, off CR 3.
The park covers 625 acres in Volusia County, built around a natural spring, flowing at a rate of about 20 million gallons a day (Second Magnitude Spring), that remains 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and reaches a depth of 30 feet at the spring boil.
Park wildlife includes manatees, alligators, white-tailed deer, turtles and otters. Among the birds that can be seen are anhingas, egrets, hawks, limpkins, ospreys, vultures, American bald eagles, American white ibis, belted kingfishers, American coots and great blue herons.
Seasonal sightings may include Florida black bears (the park is connected to Lake George State Forest and Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge), manatees seeking relief from the cold during winter and migratory birds such as a variety of duck species.
People have been living near the spring at least 6,000 years. Two dugout canoes, 5,000 and 6,000 years old, were found in the spring in 1985 and 1990. They are the oldest canoes discovered in the Western Hemisphere.
There are no known records linking Ponce de Leon to the spring. The name of the area was changed from Spring Garden to Ponce de Leon Springs to attract tourists after the Jacksonville, Tampa, Key West Railway was constructed in 1886. Spanish missions, however, were established in the late 1500s. The native people encountered here were referred to as the Mayaca, differing from the Timucuans in that they were fisher-hunter-gatherers, while the Timucuans were sedentary agriculturalists. The Spanish would return in 1783 after regaining the land from England (who had held it since 1763), granting land, including the spring, to William Williams in 1804. He established the first plantation, calling it "Spring Garden," where corn, cotton, and sugar cane were grown, using enslaved Africans to perform the work.
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Wikipedia