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🌊 Lakes & rivers

Falling Waters State Park

Chipley, FL · Panhandle

About

Florida's tallest waterfall isn't a roaring cascade. It's a 73-foot ribbon of stream that pours over a fern-lined limestone rim and vanishes straight down a cylindrical sink into a cave nobody has mapped to the end. A short boardwalk drops you to a platform below the rim, close enough to feel the mist, and the show only runs strong after recent rain, so a wet day here is the good day.

Highlights

Florida's tallest waterfall (73 ft) dropping into a sinkholeBoardwalk and viewing platforms on the Sinkhole TrailTwo-acre lake with a swimming beachSite of Florida's first oil well, drilled 1919

Getting there

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Florida State Parks

Florida's park service runs about 175 state parks, and these are the ones worth planning a trip around. Wild barrier islands and sugar-sand beaches, deep springs and dark caverns, 19th-century forts and prairies where bison still roam, from the Panhandle's emerald coast to the coral reefs of the Keys. The definitive short list, not the whole directory.