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Troy Spring State Park

Photo: Ebyabe / CC BY-SA 2.5 · source

💧 Springs

Troy Spring State Park

Branford, FL · North Central Florida

About

Troy Spring pours out of a 70-foot limestone funnel and stays a steady 72 degrees no matter what August is doing above it, so the swim is more bracing than the Suwannee next door and the water reads blue near the surface, green over the rock. The pull here is the spring run, where the bones of the Madison still rest on the bottom; the steamboat was scuttled in 1863 to keep it from Union hands, and on a clear day you can pick out its frame from the boardwalk or float right over it with a mask. Certified open-water divers can drop into the basin, but most people come to swim the bowl and snorkel the wreck, which is plenty.

Highlights

First-magnitude spring, a steady 72 degrees year-roundSnorkel or swim over the scuttled 1863 steamboat Madison in the spring runOpen-water scuba in the 70-foot basin (certified divers, no solo, no cave)Spring run empties into the Suwannee River

Getting there

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Florida Springs

Florida sits on top of one of the largest gatherings of freshwater springs on Earth, and they run a constant 68 to 74 degrees no matter the season. Some are first-magnitude giants pushing hundreds of millions of gallons a day, others are quiet blue sinkholes you can have to yourself at dawn. These are the ones worth the drive: the glass-bottom boat tours, the lazy-river tube runs, the cavern dives, and the winter springs where the manatees come in from the cold.