The Wakulla River is an 11 miles (17.7 km) river in Wakulla County, Florida

Wakulla County, Florida

Wakulla County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2000, the population was 22,863. The U.S. Census Bureau 2005 estimate for the county was 28,212 people...

. It carries the outflow from Wakulla Springs

Wakulla Springs

Wakulla Springs is located south of Tallahassee, Florida and east of Crawfordville in Wakulla County, Florida at the crossroads of State Road 61 and State Road 267...

, site of the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park is a Florida State Park in Wakulla County, Florida, USA. This 6,000 acre wildlife sanctuary, located south of Tallahassee, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and designated a National Natural Landmark...

, to the St. Marks River

St. Marks River

The St. Marks River is a river in the Big Bend region of Florida. It has been classified by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as an Outstanding Florida Water, and is the easternmost river within the Northwest Florida Water Management District....

 3 miles (5 km) north of the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

. Its drainage basin extends northwest into Leon County

Leon County, Florida

Leon County is a county located in the state of Florida, named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. At the 2010 Census, the population was 275,487. The county seat of Leon County is Tallahassee which also serves as the state capital. The county seat is home to two of Florida's major...

, including Munson Slough, and may extend as far north as the Georgia border.

The river, due to its clear, clean water, was once used to film underwater scenes during north Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

's cinema boom. Movies fimed in Wakulla Springs and river include several Tarzan

Tarzan

Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...

 movies, starring Johnny Weissmuller

Johnny Weissmuller

Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...

, and Creature from the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes...

.

Etymology

The name Wakulla is corrupted from Guacara. Guacara is a Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 phonetic spelling of an original Indian name, and Wakulla is a Muskhogean pronunciation of Guacara. The Spanish Gua is the equivalent of the Creek

Creek language

The Creek language, also known as Muskogee or Muscogee , is a Muskogean language spoken by Muscogee and Seminole people primarily in the U.S. states of Oklahoma and Florida....

 wa, and as the Creek alphabet does not exhibit an "R" sound, the second element cara would have been pronounced kala by the Creeks. The Creek voiceless "L" is always substituted for the Spanish "R". Thus the word Guacara was pronounced Wakala by the Seminoles who are Muskhogean in their origin and language. In the 17th century the Spanish also used the name "Guacara River" for what is now called the Suwannee River

Suwannee River

The Suwannee River is a major river of southern Georgia and northern Florida in the United States. It is a wild blackwater river, about long. The Suwannee River is the site of the prehistoric Suwannee Straits which separated peninsular Florida from the panhandle.-Geography:The river rises in the...

. Boyd et al. suggest that the common name of the two rivers is related to the fact that both are the products of solution topography, and that both are fed by springs.

Since Wakulla was probably a Timucua

Timucua

The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The various groups of Timucua spoke several dialects of the...

n word, it is unlikely that its meaning will ever be known. It may contain the word kala which signified a "spring of water" in some Indian dialects, but not in the Timucuan language. Timucuan cala meant "to cut or shave", "to freeze to death", or "fruit".

Navigation

The Wakulla River Canoe Trail runs for approximately 4 miles (6.4 km), between the Upper and Lower Bridges. Access to the river north of the Upper Bridge is blocked by a chain-link fence erected by Ed Ball in the 1930s; challenged in court, its legality was upheld when the river above it was found by a court to be non-navigable.

List of crossings

Crossing	Carries	Image	Location	Coordinates
Headwaters				30°14′01"N 84°18′19"W
Upper Bridge	CR 365 Shadeville Highway		Wakulla Station	30°12′49"N 84°15′41"W
Lower Bridge	US 98 U.S. Route 98 U.S. Route 98 is an east–west United States highway that runs from western Mississippi to southern Florida. It was established in 1933 as a route between Pensacola, Florida and Apalachicola, Florida, and has since been extended westward into Mississippi and eastward across the Florida... Coastal Highway		St. Marks St. Marks, Florida St. Marks is a city in Wakulla County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Tallahassee, Florida, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 272 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau is 299 .-Geography:...	30°10′32"N 84°14′43"W
Mouth				30°08′58"N 84°12′40"W