Who Killed Florida's Clearest Spring?

[00:00:00]This is old Joe. For decades, this 11 foot 650lb alligator lived on a sandbar directly across from the swimming area at Wakulla Springs. And according to the plaque attached to his glass coffin, old Joe never bothered a man, woman, child, or even somebody's pet. But on the night of August 1st, 1966, somebody shot him. The plaque still describes his death as a murder by an asalent unknown. Old Joe was so beloved by the locals, they even raised a $5,000 reward to catch his killer. Years later, a poacher named Wilton Amos Skeo Ross reportedly admitted that he killed Old Joe. [music] Ross was already facing a far more serious charge for murdering his wife, but the statute of limitations in Old Joe's case had expired. So even under the apparent confusion, nobody was ever punished and the reward [music] was never claimed. But somehow, old Joe is not even the most important Wakulla Springs icon to disappear without one person being held responsible. For nearly 150 years, people came here to look through the bottom of glass boats into another world. The boats are still here, but the view beneath them is mostly gone. So to find out what happened to the deepest, largest freshwater spring in the United States, I came out here to Aala Springs State Park just a little bit outside of Tallahassee to find out what happened to Wakulla Springs.

[00:01:24]Okay, but before we talk about what Wakulla Springs lost, you need to understand what's still here because this place is spectacular.

[00:01:32]Wakulla surrounds one of the largest freshwater springs on Earth. It feeds a beautiful river shaded by bald cyprus and Spanish moss where alligators sun themselves along the banks. Manatees move through the water and around 150 species of birds have been spotted from anahhingos to limpkins to herand egrets and eagles. The park's riverboat tour is an absolute mustd do if you visit here.

[00:01:56]It travels about 2 miles down the Wakulla River and back. And while they do accept some walk-ons, make reservations online so you don't miss out. It is not the old glass bottom experience. Instead, it's a wildlife tour on a pontoon boat. And honestly, it's worth visiting just for this alone.

[00:02:13]The river twists through a forest of cypress trees with turtles, waiting birds, and alligators appearing along the banks. And manatees are a common sight, too. Of course, it's not a guarantee that you'll see one, but on the day I visited in mid July, there were a bunch of them out here. We were lucky enough to see several manatees today. Some surfacing right beside the boat and others moving like an enormous gray submarine through the water that was still remarkably clear. And that is one of the strange things about Wakulla.

[00:02:42]Much of the river is still beautifully clear. The visibility problem is the most obvious over the main spring itself. During my visit, visibility there was estimated to be around 50 ft.

[00:02:54]And that sounds impressive until you remember that the spring vent drops down to roughly 185 ft. 50 ft of visibility and a 185 ft hole leaves most of it hidden. Instead of looking through a crystal window all the way to the bottom like you used to be able to, today you're staring into what looks like a deep blue pit. And just like almost every body of fresh water in Florida, we saw plenty of alligators, but thankfully not in the swimming area. And speaking of swimming, back at the main spring, there's a large swimming area and a 22ft diving and observation tower overlooking the spring. And for those of you with the lassophobia, the water off that diving platform drops sharply into a 185 ft dark blue abyss. I watch these kids jump in right here and wonder if they even knew that and what's down there.

[00:03:44]And more importantly, if they know what might be looking back up at them. The water stays around 70° all year round, too, which the official promotional materials describe as refreshing. But your nervous system may choose a totally different adjective once you do jump in.

[00:04:00]But between the swimming area, the boat ride, the park grounds, the trails, and the lodge, Wakulla remains one of the best value attractions in this part of Florida. And I say that as somebody who has paid Florida theme parks a lot of money over the years. But here, the entrance fee is just $6 per car. The boat tour costs an additional $8 for adults and five bucks for kids.

[00:04:22]The centerpiece here is the historic Wakulla Springs Lodge. It was built in 1937 by businessman Edward Ball. It has original period details, painted ceilings, marble, iron work, and old school class. Stepping into this lodge kind of feels like stepping back in time. And of course, over there in the corner is old Joe. But unlike Joe, Wakulla Springs is not dead. But its most famous attraction depended on something that has become increasingly difficult to find here. Crystal clear water.

[00:04:56]People have gathered around Wakulla Springs for thousands of years. But in the late 1800s, a new species began arriving here. Tourists. Glass bottom boat viewing here dates back to at least 1875 when local operators placed a window into the bottom of a rowboat and carried visitors over the spring. The water was so clear back then that passengers could look deep into the Spring Basin and see fish, rock formations, fossils, and the enormous opening of a cave below, 185 ft down. The visibility even helped people recover a complete mastadon skeleton from the bottom. The skeleton remains part of the collection at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee, but one of its bones is right here, and they even let you touch it. But this was not merely an old glass bottom boat ride. It was a natural underwater theater and when Edward Ball acquired the property during the 1930s, he developed Wakulla as an elegant retreat built around that natural spectacle. Ball constructed the lodge overlooking the spring and tried to preserve the property's wild character.

[00:05:58]That combination of a luxury lodge and enormous spring and the prehistoric river eventually even caught Hollywood's attention. Tarzan movies were filmed here. Some of the underwater scenes from the movie Airport 77 were shot here in the spring. And in 1954, portions of Creature from the Black Lagoon were filmed at Wakulla Springs. Yep. The Gilman himself emerged from this water.

[00:06:20]This is where he called home. And looking at this river with the moss, cypress trees, and alligators watching silently from the shore. It still feels like the exact place where a fish monster would maintain his second home.

[00:06:33]Hollywood came here because Wakulla looked untouched and wild, but it also came because the water was unbelievably, almost [music] impossibly clear. At least it used to be. Just talked to boat captain who gave us a little tour of the spring and he said that the visibility in the main spring really stopped being great right around the year 2000. And he was born the year 2003. So, he says he has personally never known a time where he could see right to the very bottom of a spring. And he says he has these old-timers that come on the tour who said they've been out here back in the 80s and 90s and maybe even the 70s and said that they could see all the way to the very bottom about 165 ft down. Right now about the best you could do is about 50 ft. The park only operates its glass bottom boats when the underwater visibility reaches at least 75 ft. But from 1987 through about 2003, the water was clear enough for tours on anywhere from only 17 to 75% of the days in a given year. But from 2004 through 2010, that fell to between 0 and 15% of days.

[00:07:36][music] And in some years, the glass bottom boat sat here at the dock and didn't run at all. The boats didn't become obsolete. The view beneath them just disappeared.

[00:07:46]So what happened? To answer that, we need to understand that Wakulla Springs is not an isolated swimming hole.

[00:07:54]Wakulla Spring is connected to the longest mapped underwater cave system in the United States. [music] And by 2023, divers had explored and mapped approximately 45 m of passageways under the Florida panhandle. And the area supplying water to the spring covers an estimated 975 square miles. That means something happening many miles away can eventually change the water inside this park. And there is not one simple reason Wakulla became difficult to see through.

[00:08:21]There's actually two overlapping problems here. Dark water and green water. Now, dark water is largely caused by tannins. When rainwater passes through forests, swamps, and leaves, it picks up natural organic material that gives the water a brown tealike color.

[00:08:38]That darker surface water enters sink holes and underwater passages. It travels through the aquafer and eventually emerges here at Wakulla Springs. And it does not take much of it to ruin the underwater visibility. Think of pouring a little bit of iced tea into a glass of clear water. Except this glass is one of the largest springs on Earth, and alligators and manatees are floating around in it. But tannins are not the entire story. The second problem is excess nitrogen. Nitrogen is a natural nutrient, but [music] in large amounts, it acts like fertilizer inside the spring, encouraging algae and changing the balance of aquatic vegetation here. So tannins can make wakala brown, nitrogen can make it green. And both can prevent the glass bottom boats from showing visitors the world below. The difference is that tannins are largely natural. Can't do much about that. But much of the excess nitrogen is coming from us.

[00:09:33]When scientists investigated the sources of nitrogen entering Wakulla's groundwater, the largest share of it did not come from one factory somewhere or one obvious pipe dumping directly into the spring. The murder weapon wasn't a candlestick in the conservatory. It was actually a septic tank, or more accurately, thousands of ordinary septic systems spread across an enormous region. In 2025, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection adopted an updated cleanup plan for Wakulla Springs. Officially, it's called a basin management action plan, but basically it identifies where the nitrogen is coming from and what needs to be done to reduce it.

[00:10:13]>> [music] >> And according to that plan, septic systems are now the largest estimated source, accounting for about 43% of the nitrogen entering groundwater across the entire Wakulla River basin. A conventional septic system treats household waste water, but it does not remove all of its nitrogen. In most places, that is not immediately visible.

[00:10:32]But North Florida sits on porous limestone filled with cracks, caves, [music] and underground channels.

[00:10:38]Nitrogen can move through the soil, enter the aquafer, and eventually emerge miles away at a spring like Wakulla. And this is why protecting the land immediately surrounding Wakulla is not enough. The spring's plumbing extends far beyond the boundaries of the park.

[00:10:54]So unlike the murder of old Joe, this story does not have just one villain.

[00:10:58]Nobody woke up one morning and decided to destroy the view through the glass bottom boats. The damage accumulated gradually. One septic system, one fertilized lawn, one new development, one little decision at a time. And to be clear, this does not mean raw sewage is pouring into the swimming hole here. The brown color comes mainly from naturally tanic water moving through the underground system. And excess nitrogen creates a different problem. It acts like fertilizer, encouraging algae and changing the spring's plant life. So the water can still be perfectly safe for swimming while the ecosystem is struggling with too much nitrate. The park remains [music] open. The swimming hole is beautiful. Manatees, fish, turtles, and alligators still live here.

[00:11:42]This is a slower, [music] more complicated problem, which is part of the reason it took so long for people to fully understand it. Old Joe had one trigger pulled by one person. [music] Wakulla Springs has thousands of tiny causes spread across hundreds of square miles.

[00:11:59]The good news is that Wakulla Springs is not beyond saving. The state's current restoration plan includes connecting more homes to a central sewer, removing or upgrading septic systems, expanding water quality monitoring, and researching better nitrogen reduction technology. But even after pollution is reduced at the source, Wakulla may not respond immediately. In some parts of the system, groundwater can reach the spring in [music] weeks or months. In other areas, that journey could take decades. So, some of the water emerging here today may carry the consequences of decisions made years ago, and some of the benefits from work being done right now might not appear until years in the future. There will also always be natural changes. [music] Heavy rain can still bring tanic water into the spring, even if every septic problem is addressed. The realistic goal is not to make Wakulla perfectly clear every day forever. It's to reduce the human cause damage, improve the ecosystem, and give the spring a better chance to resemble the place older visitors remember.

[00:13:02]But the spring is not dead. It's just been changed. And on the right days, it still reminds us of what it can be.

[00:13:11]And despite everything I just told you, Wakulla Springs remains one of the best days out in North Florida. [music] The river tour was one of the most beautiful wildlife cruises I've ever taken anywhere in the state. It was genuinely stunning. The manatees [music] still live here. The alligators are definitely still here. The swimming area is open.

[00:13:29]The diving platform is open right along with that 185 ft drop. The lodge is open and the park is thriving. So, come out and check this place out. Take the boat ride, walk through the lodge, and say hello to Old Joe. Old Joe's case is over, but the spring's story is not. The ranger who took me down this river was born after Wakulla's clearest days had already started disappearing. But maybe his generation will be the one that gets to watch them return.

[00:13:57]Wakulla Springs did not stop being worth visiting when we stopped being able to see the bottom. But the fact that so much beauty remains here is exactly why what happened beneath the surface matters. Because sometimes the most important part of a place is the part we can no longer see.