The Cross Florida Barge Canal
A canal to cut Florida in half, one third built, cancelled in 1971, now a 110-mile greenway with locks that lead nowhere.
RUIN
Inglis · Levy
Free
Free
8WEIRD
← THE REGISTER / BY REGION
STRANGE PLACES IN NORTH FLORIDA
North Florida is the register's smallest region by count and its densest by theme. Four entries, all within an easy day of Gainesville or Ocala, and all of them about holes in the ground or the consequences of somebody's plan.
Two are sinks. One is a bowl 500 feet across, measurably cooler at the bottom than at the rim; the other is a collapsed cavern full of clear water at a fixed 72 degrees, which takes divers. Together they are the best short introduction to why Florida's landscape looks the way it does.
The other two are human. A house on Lake Weir that agents fired an estimated 1,500 rounds into in 1935, and which Marion County later moved several miles by flatbed to restore, and the Cross Florida Barge Canal, a scheme to cut the state in half that was funded, started, and then stopped, leaving structures in the woods with nothing to do.
4
ENTRIES IN THE REGION
2
FREE TO VISIT
8/10
MEDIAN STRANGENESS
3
COUNTIES
The Ma Barker House
The lakeside cottage where the FBI fought a four-hour gun battle with the Barker gang in 1935. The county moved the whole house by truck.
HAUNTED
Ocklawaha · Marion
Free outside, tours occasional
Free outside, tours occasional
8WEIRD
Devil's Den
A prehistoric spring inside a dry cave, entered by a staircase down a hole in a field.
GEOLOGICAL ANOMALY · UNDERWATER
Williston · Levy
$20 snorkel, $38 dive
$20 snorkel, $38 dive
7WEIRD
The Devil's Millhopper
A 120-foot limestone sinkhole with its own climate and the bones of extinct animals in the walls.
GEOLOGICAL ANOMALY
Gainesville · Alachua
$4 per vehicle
$4 per vehicle
6WEIRD
BROWSE THE REST OF THE REGISTER
BY TYPE
Built by one person 12
Geological oddities 7
Cryptids 1
Haunted 6
Underwater 7
Roadside giants 9
Animals 12
Ruins and abandoned places 10
Strange towns 3
Machines and vessels 1
BY REGION
The Panhandle 5
North Florida 4
Central Florida 15
The Gulf Coast 11
The Atlantic Coast 4
South Florida 11
The Keys 10
BY COST
Free to visit 24