Excavations at Manatee Springs have revealed layer upon layer of human presence stretching back millennia. The picnic area that visitors use today was once a Timucuan village, its inhabitants drawn by the same forces that draw people now: fresh water, abundant fish, and a river route to the coast. Archaeologists have uncovered pottery fragments, bone awls, and arrowheads from the Weeden Island period, along with sea turtle remains and saltwater shells -- evidence that these inland villagers traded with or traveled to the Gulf. The arrival of Spanish colonists in the 1500s disrupted the culture that had thrived here for thousands of years. Then came the Seminole Wars in the 1830s and 1840s, which cleared much of the region's indigenous population. Settlers moved in to harvest timber, grow cotton and corn, and raise livestock along the Suwannee. On January 23, 1968, the springs became Florida's first spring to achieve state park status.

Ninety feet below the surface of a sinkhole near the main spring lies the entrance to one of the most extensive underwater cave systems in Florida. Divers call it the Catfish Hotel, named for the bottom-dwelling fish that congregate at the opening. The system includes four main entry points -- Headspring, Catfish Hotel, Sue Sink, and Friedman's Sink -- and divers have explored and mapped over five miles of submerged passages branching through the limestone karst. Sue Sink is designated as an emergency exit only, because entering or leaving it is hazardous and causes soil erosion. Friedman Sink, the furthest upstream entrance, is reserved for certified cave divers. At the Catfish Hotel itself, the siphon side produces an immense flow that demands respect even from experienced cavern divers. A layer of duckweed floats on the surface above, making the pool look deceptively unremarkable from the bank.

The West Indian manatees for which the spring was named still travel here, swimming twenty-three miles upriver from the Gulf to reach water that holds at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The Suwannee River itself runs dark with tannic acid leached from decaying vegetation, which stunts the growth of aquatic plants in most of its length. But the spring's clear outflow creates a pocket of clean, warm water where manatees can feed and rest. They appear most often in fall and winter, when the river cools and the spring becomes a thermal refuge -- a place to calve and shelter through harsh cold snaps. Around one hundred manatee sightings are recorded at the park each year. The spring run closes to boat traffic during peak manatee season, a measure that has helped the population stabilize and allowed visitors to observe the animals undisturbed from the boardwalk above.

The spring attracts another wintering visitor that gives the landscape a strikingly different character. Large numbers of American black vultures roost in the moss-draped cypress trees that line the spring run, their dark silhouettes perched among the Spanish moss in numbers that visitors often find startling. The birds are not afraid of humans but are not aggressive either, creating an atmosphere that feels more like a scene from a Southern Gothic novel than a state park brochure. Below the vultures, the spring run flows through swamps and hardwood wetlands of cypress, sweetgum, maple, and ash on its way to the Suwannee -- the longest spring run feeding the river. Largemouth bass, speckled perch, catfish, bream, and longnose gar move through these waters. White-tailed deer browse the uplands. The whole park hums with the layered life that a first-magnitude spring, pumping tens of millions of gallons per day, makes possible.