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ARTS & CULTURE
Artistic and cultural experiences cross Northwest Florida—affectionately known as Florida’s Panhandle—with amazing variety. So let’s start in the middle, where Florida’s capital city of Tallahassee is celebrating its bicentennial in 2024 with a year-long slate of special events, including Springtime Tallahassee in April, with two days of arts, crafts, food and live entertainment.
The capital city’s cultural scene has been on the move in recent years and brimming with creative excitement in places like Historic Railroad Square, once a forgotten lumber yard but now an expanding arts district of tin-roof warehouses, brightly painted and filled with art galleries, studios, vintage shops, creative wares and a nonprofit theater. After exploring, visitors relax in a café built from a real railroad caboose.
In addition to historic architecture, Tallahassee’s vibrant downtown features offers a cultural trove of dance and musical performances but culture seekers should also include Cascades Park in the mix, whose winding trails and historical markers lead to discoveries like The Smokey Hollow Commemoration, remembering a thriving Black community displaced by development; a block away, the John G. Riley House, built in 1890, is the last physical evidence of this community.
Also in Cascades Park is the Korean War Memorial, the TLH public sculpture, and the Capital City Amphitheater, showcasing everything from rock and roll to the works of Shakespeare.
Culture seekers also will want to visit the westernmost city of Pensacola, which—like so many Florida cities—is home to the so-called “five arts”: ballet, opera, fine art museums, symphony and theater, all set in historic, eclectic downtown Pensacola.
East of Pensacola and part of Northwest Florida State College, the Mattie Kelly Arts Center in Niceville, just north of Destin, hosts the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, joined throughout the year by Broadway shows, fine and performing arts and myriad student-run shows.
Heading southeast on Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast, follow the Panama City Mural Trail, featuring more than 15 murals—including the iconic Flutter By, a gathering of colorful butterflies and one of Panama City’s most photographed locations. It’s just one of dozens of mural destinations throughout the state, including some vintage murals in the Old Florida town of Palatka, where more than 30 murals depict the historical, cultural and natural riches of Putnam County on the St. Johns River, a busy tourism center at the turn of the last century where visitors arrived via steamboat and stayed in grand hotels.
West of Palatka is the north-central city of Gainesville, home to the University of Florida, whose cultural plaza features the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Butterfly Rainforest, the Curtis Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and the Harn Museum of Art, where visitors browse a collection of more than 13,000 works of art focusing on African, Asian, modern and contemporary art.
Due north of Palatka on the St. Johns River is the urban yet green metropolis of Jacksonville, where dozens of museums include the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, whose collection spans 8,000 years; and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the only museum in Northeast Florida dedicated to this era. The second-oldest contemporary art museum in the country, MOCA is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2024. franklin cityJust south of Jacksonville, Clay County celebrates the legacy of the legendary rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd—originally from Jacksonville—with an itinerary that includes the Ronnie Van Zant Memorial Park, commemorating the lead singer who died in a 1977 plane crash.
On the Atlantic Coast of Northeast Florida, the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine occupies the former Alcazar, a Gilded Age resort hotel built by Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler, whose Florida East Coast Railroad followed the coast all the way to Key West, basically making development and tourism in the Sunshine State possible.
HISTORY & HERITAGE
When exploring history and heritage in Florida, the journey usually starts in Northeast Florida, where St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565 and still reflects Imperial Spain along the cobbled streets of its downtown core, home to some of the oldest structures not only in Florida, but the entire country—including the Gonzalez-Alvarez House, built in 1723 and one of 54 sites (and counting) in St. Augustine listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
But not all of St. Augustine’s prized sites go back to colonial days. Built in 1898, The Waterworks was once the pumping station for the City’s first water utility during the Flagler Era and remained in service until 1927, when a new water plant opened on West King Street. In 1928, The Waterworks was converted into a community center, making it one of the earliest adaptive use projects in the city’s history. Listed on the National Register, The Waterworks is now home to the St. Johns County Cultural Council, hosting arts, cultural and heritage programming, including the monthly Live from The Waterworks: A Gamble Rogers Concert Series featuring performances by prominent folk musicians as a tribute to Gamble Rogers, a renowned musician and storyteller who is regarded as the ambassador of Florida folk culture.
This era also is recalled south of St. Augustine in Palm Coast, home to the Florida Agricultural Museum, where guests experience the state’s rural past at the museum’s pioneer homestead and on wagon rides and farm tours.
North of St. Augustine, Amelia Island has lived under eight different flags, including France and Spain, during a history stretching back 400 years of maritime and military history, pirates and Spanish treasure fleets. Local tales are told at the Amelia Island Museum of History, while Fort Clinch State Park on the island’s northern end is home to one of the most well-preserved 19th-century forts in the country. Also on Amelia Island’s northern side is historic Fernandina Beach, where blocks of Victorian-era architecture offer a living snapshot of the past.
Frontier Florida lives on in Alachua County—home to the charming main street town of Micanopy—and the college town of Gainesville, where exhibits at the Matheson History Museum span the centuries, from a 1,400-year-old Timucuan canoe to artifacts from 1885 Alachua County Courthouse, torn down in 1961. The site also includes the 1867 Matheson House, one of the three oldest residences in Gainesville.
Another cultural treasure in Gainesville is the 1856 Historic Haile Homestead, established as a 1,500-acre Sea Island cotton plantation built by enslaved craftsmen. Once the house passed to Evans Haile—the 14th of 15 Haile children—it became his weekend retreat where guests took up the practice of writing on the walls. Over 12,500 words dating back to the 1850s have been found in the rooms and closets of this National Register home, becoming the uniquely famous “Talking Walls” of Haile Homestead.
Vestiges of Victorian, antebellum and frontier Florida are scattered in towns across North Florida, but for a deep dive into the past, Mission San Luis in Tallahassee transports you back to the year 1703, when native Apalachee tribes invited Spaniards to establish mission; San Luis was the westernmost site on the mission chain in North Florida.
North of Tallahassee, Native Americans inhabited the area around Lake Jackson and today’s Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park preserves the remains of six of the seven known earthen temple mounds. At nearby Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park, Florida’s tallest Native American ceremonial mound was built between 1,100 and 1,800 years ago.
In the Gulf Coast city of Fort Walton Beach, the Heritage Park & Cultural Center presents the prehistory and history of the Northwest Florida area from 14,000 BC through the 1950s and includes the Indian Temple Mound Museum and the Fort Walton Temple Mound, built as a ceremonial and political center from 800 to 1400 AD.
Meanwhile, you can walk through history along America’s 1st Settlement Trail, a free and publicly accessible pedestrian trail that spans three miles throughout Pensacola’s historic downtown district. While guests travel along the “A1S Trail,” they’ll be educated on the extensive history of the destination through a series of 20 stops and over 70 points of interest, including descriptive landmarks, images, and details on the surrounding area. Experience special spots such as the Dorr House, Old Christ Church, Fort George, and Fort San Miguel.
NATURE & ECOTOURISM
Spanning two coasts and with an inland of deep forests and bubbling springs, North Florida is an ecotourist’s haven.
Head to coastal Gulf County, two hours southwest of Tallahassee, where T.H. Stone Memorial St. Joseph Peninsula State Park—bordered by tall dunes on the Gulf side and marshes on the St. Joseph Bay side—is a prime location for seeking immersion in a natural setting for hiking, paddling, fishing and wildlife watching. Really want to get lost? There are 14 primitive camping sites in the park’s Wilderness Preserve, which can be reached by hiking trail or kayak.
Another true getaway awaits on Dog Island, a three-mile ferry ride from the coastal town of Carrabelle across the Saint George Sound. If it’s peace and quiet while communing with wildlife you’re looking for, you’ll find it here. Before or after, spend time in Carrabelle, one of the last vestiges of Old Florida on what’s called the “Forgotten Coast,” where a working waterfront offers charter fishing and recreational boating and eateries serve up the freshest seafood possible, including the world-famous Apalachicola oysters.
If you can’t get enough of Sunshine State shellfish, head to Levy County in the “Big Bend” region of North Florida’s Gulf Coast, which has put together the Big Bend Shellfish Trail, visiting working waterfront towns harvesting clams, oysters, blue crabs, stone crabs, shrimp and scallops. Local charter captains can take you out on a snorkel trip visiting “oyster bars” and scallop beds in about five feet of water.
VisitLevy has a downloadable map to help you get started.
Undiscovered adventure is waiting in Clay County south of Jacksonville, where an inland waterscape includes 39 miles of creeks and tributaries branching from mighty St. Johns River, with marinas available for boat and watercraft rentals.
But speaking of inland waterscapes, north-central Florida is where many of the state’s 700 natural springs are located, including mammoth gushers like Wakulla, one of the world’s largest and deepest freshwater springs, surrounded by an ancient cypress swamp that creates a primeval forest feeling unlike anywhere else in the world. Small wonder Tarzan movies were filmed here.
Today, visitors to Wakulla Springs State Park can swim where mastodons once roamed and manatees still swim in the perennially comfortable 70-degree water. Guided glass-bottom boat tours also are a popular way to enjoy the spring, whose water is so clear, you can see straight down to the bottom; in fact this is how a complete mastodon skeleton was once discovered.
Back on dry land, you’ll explore Santa Rosa County’s pristine Blackwater River State Forest along the Blackwater Heritage State Trail, a paved byway winding across wooden bridges and creeks and through the historic town of Milton. Continue to Gulf Islands National Seashore, where you’ll see untouched beaches welcoming nesting sea turtles along miles of hiking trails—it’s one of the few places in the U.S. where you can walk a National Scenic Trail along the beach.
STAY AWHILE
Built in 1937, The Lodge at Wakulla Springs offers 27 rooms, plus the world’s longest marble soda fountain, in the middle of a state park. In historic Fernandina Beach, the 17-room Florida House Inn was built in 1857 as a boarding house and now features an English-style pub and beautifully landscaped gardens.