Unsung heritage corridor: Springs, history, scenic byway in Central Florida

Last updated on February 17th, 2025 at 08:51 am

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of this fascinating region of Florida. The name does not immediately tell you where it is; it comes from a phrase describing the mighty St. Johns River, Florida’s longest river.

It’s the the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor and a few years ago it was designated as a National Scenic Byway (there are only eight of them in Florida.)

It took me decades of Florida rambling before I got to explore this less visited region, centered around the charming and historic Old Florida town of DeLand.

The River of Lakes Heritage Corridor is not a single road. The longest single section of road that is part of the byway is US 17 from Sanford north to Seville. US 17 itself is not particularly scenic.

But if you get off US 17 and take some of the back roads, you’ll find Old Florida beauty.

This less-visited region of Florida is wonderful for those who love to get off the beaten path, particularly if you enjoy kayaking, bicycling, camping, wildlife, springs and historic sites. The sprawling nature of the River of Lake Heritage Corridor is both as asset – so much to see and do! – and a challenge.  Exactly where should you plan to go?

We’ll suggest a few highlights, starting from Sanford and heading north. At the end of this article, look for more tips for creating an itinerary.

Lake Monroe area

The River of Lakes Heritage Corridor extends to make a loop around Lake Monroe, a big beautiful body of water that is a wide section of the St. Johns River — one of those lakes in the “river of lakes.”

The largest city, Sanford, is a hidden gem and an ideal weekend getaway. We wrote a whole article about Sanford.

There’s a beautiful riverfront where you can walk or bicycle for miles. Within a half hour, there are two wild and wonderful rivers to kayak and numerous hiking trails.  Sanford has a charming brick-paved downtown filled with preserved historic buildings enlivened with good restaurants plus many breweries and bars. (And a distillery that sells a unique Key Lime gin.)

Highlights of the Sanford area

• The five-mile-long Riverwalk along Lake Monroe is great for bicycling or strolling.
• Sanford is 30 minutes from the stunning Econlockhatchee River and 20 minutes from Katie’s Landing, a great launch site on the wild and scenic Wekiva River. See details in our Sanford story.

On the northern side of Lake Monroe, you find several charming smaller towns: DeBary and Enterprise, each with historic buildings and small local museums, and two parks with interesting springs worth visiting.

Highlights of the area north of Lake Monroe:

• Green Spring is in a local park and has a remarkable iridescent green color – like a pool of milky absinthe. People have been marveling at it for 180 years. It is a small circular spring with huge trees overhanging the water and framing it. There are short trails too.
• Gemini Springs is a larger park, with multiple picnic sites and several places to view the springs, including the neat Springhouse pavilion with a deck built around some impressive old trees. It even offers 10 tent-only primitive camping sites under arching live oak trees. The park’s two springs – that’s why it’s named Gemini, get it? — are lovely, small and easily viewed.
• Bicyclists can tour this area on two excellent connected trails – the East Coast Regional Rail Trail and a section of the still-being-completed Spring to Spring Trail.  You can find more about these trails and springs at our story focusing on the East Coast Regional Rail Trail.

If you are coming from the East Coast, you can begin the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor byway by starting at Oak Hill on the Mosquito Lagoon. It’s another out-of-the-way undeveloped Old Florida site, where you’ll find the lovely Seminole Rest historic site, which is part of Canaveral National Seashore, as well as a very good long-standing seafood restaurant, Goodrich Seafood. You’ll find all the details in our story on Oak Hill and Seminole Rest.

Note that if you’re in the area, the section of Maytown Road between Oak Hill and I-95 is as pretty a scenic road as you’ll find — a narrow two-lane route through a wondrous cypress forest with oak trees forming a canopy. West of I-95, Maytown Road is still undeveloped, but less scenic.

Blue Spring and Hontoon Island state parks  

One of Florida’s most popular state parks, Blue Spring, is located north of Lake Monroe right off the St. Johns River, into which the spring spills its clear 72 degree water.

Blue Spring is a must-stop in winter, when it is home to hundreds of manatees. In the summer, it’s a favorite spot to swim in the chilly spring water, floating with the current in an inner tube. For a few weeks in the spring, the parks stays open late for “firefly season” when its thick woods look like it has been invaded by twinkling fairies. 

At any time of year, however, this beautiful spring is worth a visit, and kayakers can launch here for a short or long trip. You also can rent kayaks in the park or book a narrated nature cruise.

The park has six excellent cabins (which are extremely hard to reserve) and a popular campground. Here’s a Florida Rambler story on Blue Spring State Park.

A few miles north of Blue Spring is Hontoon Island State Park, a wild island in the St. Johns River reachable only by boat. Its rustic cabins and campground have not reopened since Hurricane Ian flooded the park in 2022. During a visit in January 2025, a ranger said it would still be a year or more before it reopened.

You can visit on a free shuttle boat Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays or paddle over on your own kayak any day. The waters that encircle the island are an excellent kayak trail. There are three rivers – the Hontoon  Dead River, Snake Creek and the St. Johns. It’s a10-mile loop or any of these waterways makes a great out-and-back. (For kayakers, let me warn you: The kayak launch to reach the island is a muddy mess. We used it, but if you’re doing the loop trail, consider launching from Blue Springs State Park instead.)

On Hontoon, you’ll also find miles of hiking trails, wildlife and few crowds.

Here’s a Florida Rambler story on Hontoon Island State Park.

Delightful DeLand

The county seat of Volusia County (which includes Daytona Beach), Deland is a historic town that is home to the private Stetson University, which has 2,300 undergraduates.

The combination of a university population and well-preserved historic building has resulted in DeLand having a surprisingly lively downtown, which is compact and walkable. We stayed in a downtown hotel (the Historic Artisan Hotel) on Main Street and enjoyed walking to dinner and browsing in the many small and interesting shops.

DeLand has 68 buildings built between 1886 and 1925 on the National Register of Historic Places, and has done an excellent job of placing plaques identifying many of them. The plaques are informative and written with a fun sense of humor you’ll appreciate. Fans of historic buildings can tour the Deland House Museum and take a walking tour on weekends from the West Volusia Historical Society, 137 W. Michigan.

We enjoyed our self-guided stroll in the historic area around the historic society building, where many of the historic homes are maintained and landscaped to be show places. We then walked to the Stetson University campus, which is itself a historic district, and admired its historic buildings.

Another way to enjoy the historic DeLand downtown is to stop at The West Volusia Tourism Bureau and Visitor Center is located at 116. W. New York Ave, DeLand, (386) 734-0162, and pick up a brochure about the 15 historic murals that enliven downtown. If you’re planning a trip, you can request materials be mailed to you here.

One of the most popular stops in DeLand is the Stetson Mansion, which has been described as the largest, grandest mansion built in Florida before the modern era. It’s a 10,000-square foot Victorian built for hat maker and philanthropist John B. Stetson in 1886. It has earned the name The Christmas Mansion because from November to mid-January, it is decked out with over-the-top Christmas decorations, including six rooms by designers.

Cassadaga Spiritual Camp, 15 minutes from downtown DeLand, is a historic district like no other. Built at the turn of the 20^th Century, it grew out of the great interest in spiritualism that followed the Civil War. Spiritualists believe spirit life continues after death and that mediums can communicate with those who have passed.

Cassadaga was built to be a winter home for wealthy northern spiritualists. It is no “museum” of the past, however. It is an active spiritualist community, where many of houses are occupied by mediums who either live there or have offices. When you walk into the historic 1928 Hotel Cassadaga, for example, you’ll see a list of mediums who are available that day to do readings or “healing sessions” or, in the evening, 10-minute mini-readings. Also available are séances, which take place in a special room in the historic temple, where you are welcome to join in Sunday services.

The historic buildings are more than 100 years old and are in varying degrees of repair.  It’s a small community clustered around the two public buildings – the book store/welcome center and the hotel.  The hotel has a restaurant open for lunch and dinner called Sinatra’s Ristorante. Throughout the community, there are small parks you can visit.

We took the two-hour historic tour, which is available on Fridays and Saturdays for $15. The tour is about spiritualism itself as well as about Cassadaga’s history. I am a skeptic and was mostly interested in a historic perspective. But most of the people on the tour had booked readings, and that’s the audience that would enjoy this tour the most.

DeLeon Springs and Lake Woodruff NWR

DeLeon Springs State Park is an old roadside attraction full of Old Florida flavor. There is a large popular swimming area at the headsprings, but DeLeon Springs is best known as the “pancake park” because the historic restaurant located in an old sugar mill has for decades let you make yourself pancakes at a griddle in the middle of your table.

There’s a popular boat tour here and you can rent kayaks. We brought our own and launched it there, paddling along the edge of Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to DeLeon Springs Parks. It’s a lovely place for an out-and-back paddle, with plenty of beautiful cypress trees plus a variety of wintering birds and gators. Our favorite wildlife spotting, without question, was an American Eagle.

First thing in the morning, we hiked at Lake Woodruff Refuge and enjoyed the wildlife – again lots of birds and gators. Here, the highlights were multiple sandhill cranes. As we looked through our camera to take a photo of the cranes, a river otter slunk across the path behind them!

Between Lake Woodruff NWR and DeLeon Springs, we were busy for a whole day.

Barberville Pioneer Settlement

At the northern end of the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor is the Barberville Pioneer Settlement, a living history museum that is heavily visited by area school children on field trips. It has 18 historic structures plus exhibits of hand tools and life in the early days of the area’s history. Adult admission is $10 for a self-guided tour.

With farm animals, old Cracker cabins, a historic school with exhibits about candle making and weaving, an old train station, model railroad layout, historic printing presses, a post office and more, it is a delightful way to spend an hour or two. We arrived at 9 a.m. as the place opened. As we were leaving around 10:30, some 70 second-grade students were getting off their school bus, boucing in excitement as they began their visit

Nearby is one of those roadside treats that make road trips so worth doing: Barberville Yard Art Emporium, 140 FL-40, Pierson.

I had never heard of this place so as we drove by, I was stunned: There are three acres of outdoor sculptures and objects, huge colorful, often funky objects on display in the open air. You can get lost here wandering among life-size animals, towering dinosaurs, statues of aliens and a stunning variety of other weird and wonderful objects. Definitely a fun, short stop.

Tips on planning an itinerary

If you’re a bicyclist, you’ll find your best trails around Lake Monroe and on the 5-mile stretch of the Spring to Spring Trail, which begins near Blue Spring State Park and heads north to Lake Beresford Park, which is one of those lakes that make up the St. Johns. This region is building bike trails rapidly, and you’ll find the latest trail information at River2SeaLoop.org. Here’s the Spring to Spring trail map.

If you’re a kayaker, you have several excellent options. If you need to rent a kayak, the easiest places to do that are DeLeon Springs State Park and Blue Spring State Park, where you can just walk in and rent one. You can arrange with an outfitter near Sanford to paddle the Wekiva and the Econlockhatchee River, both of which are very wild and beautiful. (See our Sanford story.) If you have your own kayak, you can launch at the parking lot on the St. Johns River that serves Hontoon Island State Park and paddle from there around the island.

How much time should I spend here? Any of these individual parks or historic sites can be done as a one-day visit if you’re passing through. If you’re based in DeLand or Sanford, it’s easy to spend two to four days if you spend a couple days or half days kayaking or bicycling.  If you’re doing more of a road trip, you could pick your favorite stops from this article and spend two nights in the area. (It’s only 45 miles from the southern to the northern end of the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor.)

We’ve visited this area several times to separately stay at Blue Spring State Park and Hontoon Island State Park. Until I discovered all the maps, attractions and information pulled together through the River of Lakes Heritage Corridor, however, I didn’t venture beyond the state parks.

At a time when Florida seems to have too many people, too few parks and too little Old Florida, I was happy to discover this region.

Here are Florida Rambler stories to help you plan a trip:

• East Coast Regional Bike Trail
• Sanford
• Blue Spring State Park
• Hontoon Island State Park
• Oak Hill and Seminole Rest historic site
• DeLeon Springs State Park