Would you like to paddle the Withlacoochee and Suwannee Rivers for a week in June 2019 with 300 of your closest friends? Our rivers topped Paddle Georgia’s poll of six destinations. Joe Cook, Mr. Paddle Georgia, called me back in July about this possibility. That’s why on July 5, 2018, I blogged A week on the Withlacoochee River in June?
Paddle Georgia discovering the Withlacoochee River has rapids.
It turns out there was a story in the Continue reading
WWALS member Elizabeth Reynolds recently discovered one of our favorite spots, Jennings Bluff Spring, below Jennings Bluff Cemetery on the Alapaha River Water Trail. We’ve been there on several Dead River Sink hikes, and she also went back and this time sent some pictures, posted below with permission.
One of the original explorers revisited south Georgia’s only known extensive underground spring cave system forty years later: McIntyre Spring on the Withlacoochee River.
Photo: Guy Bryant
Who would have thought that off the Withlacoochee River under Brooks County, Georgia there were caves so big you can hardly see both the diver and the edge: Continue reading
Aaron Sirmons sent these pictures. He was tipped off by Guy Bryant.
Apparently the church used to use the spring for baptisms. Continue reading
Today, 6PM, in Live Oak, now with draft plan:
To: Suwannee River Basin BMAP Stakeholders
From: Terry Hansen, Basin CoordinatorThe Draft BMAP for the Lower and Middle Suwannee River, Withlacoochee River, and associated springs to be discussed at the November 14th, 2017 meeting has been posted to:.
http://publicfiles.dep.state.fl.us/DEAR/BMAP/Suwannee/DRAFT BMAP/
The Department requests that you please submit any comments on the draft document by COB Thursday, November 30th, 2017.
Meeting Reminder:
November 14, 2017, 6:00 PM,
Suwannee River Water Management District,
9225 CR49 Live Oak, FL 32060 Continue reading
We made it to Spook Bridge from US 84! It was a small group, four of us, on a cold November afternoon. And we saw the sad remains of Wade Spring.
Paddling upstream was not practicable, Continue reading
Update 2024-05-01: Fixed image links and a few typos, and added strip mine too near the Okefenokee swamp.
Floridians worried about springs drying up: it already happened to this one. A sad channel with no flow in Saunders Park once was a large and famous spring-fed pool, remembered by many in Valdosta, Georgia, both those who went there and those who were refused.
The man who built Barber Pool at that spring on River Street, E.R. Barber, was the first Coca-Cola bottler outside of Atlanta, an inventor, and also the builder of
the current home of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce.
The Barber-Pittman House
is on the
National Register of Historic Places.
That big house on the main drag, Ashley Street, just north of downtown Valdosta, was willed to the citizens of Valdoosta by his daughter,
Ola Barber-PIttman.
Here’s what Barber Pool looked like in its heyday.
![[Slide]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2017-09-29--barber-pool/21768319_1679872672024531_872727824924035316_n.jpg)
Thanks to Continue reading
The ghostly remains of the spring pool in what was once a famous resort. Aaron Sirmons says the owner told him when her father bought the place in the 1960s, the spring was already destroyed. The Brooks County Manager told me somebody tried to enlarge it and destroyed it. It looks like maybe they used dynamite.
Wade Spring is actually easily visible from Blue Springs Road in Brooks County, Georgia, if you know just where to peer through the bushes. That’s at Continue reading
Local cave diver Aaron Sirmons took these pictures and videos of the formerly famous Wade Springs of Brooks County, Georgia, between Blue Springs Road and the railroad, west of the Withlacoochee River. He has a letter of permission from the landowner.
Apparently Charlie Dean has one more day left on an FDEP permit to build a dock at Nichols Spring on the Withlacoochee (south) River at Lat: 28° 50′ 23.6438″ Lon: -82° 12′ 9.8242″ (28.839901, -82.202729), at SR 44 on CR 251 West, Wildwood, in Sumter County, Florida. The nearest house, maybe his, is at 5927 CR 251W, Lake Panasoffkee, FL 33538.
Possibly this is former Florida State Senator Charlie Dean (R-District 5), who represented parts or all of Baker, Citrus, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Lafayette, Levy, Marion, Suwannee, and Union Counties, Florida, but curiously not Sumter County.
Found via Continue reading