Boulware Springs

On the Road 1 Minute

One of the things I love about Gainesville is the way its landscape blends familiar southern trees like live oaks with lush tropical undergrowth. You can see this effect most fully around the area’s natural springs.

One of the best sites is the old Gainesville waterworks located at Boulware Springs just north of Paynes Prairie. There is much history at this site.

In 1854, so the story goes, the residents of Alachua Country met here at the artesian springs to plan the new town of Gainesville as the county seat. Boulware Springs was the focal point of the meeting because it was going to be the water supply for the new city.

Later when Gainesville wanted to lure the University of Florida here from Lake City, local authorities offered to supply water to the campus for free — from Boulware Springs. In fact, the city got its water exclusively from here until 1913.

The old waterworks building now is part of a trailhead for the Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail and still sits inside a sunken area where Boulware Springs flows up into a fern-covered basin. It is a beautiful green setting that is Old Florida at its best.

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Published by Robert Craig Waters

Robert Craig Waters is a Florida writer. After leaving journalism in the early 1980s, he worked as an attorney, communications director, and public spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee for 35 years. He grew up on a family farm in Beulah, Florida, not far from the Alabama border, before attending Brown University in the 1970s. His mother's family traces its roots to Weaverville, North Carolina. His father's family is from the small village of Burnt Corn, Alabama, where Mr. Waters spent part of his childhood.

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