Johnson Spring is a jewel in the North Florida woods and my favorite of the springs that are protected in the Gilchrist Blue State Park.
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Located at about 29°49'53"N, 82°40'46"W it is a short hike east from the main spring and swimming area at Gilchrist Blue Spring.
From the sandy parking area at Gilchrist Blue you walk down a steep hill into the floodplain which is about 10 m (30 feet) above sea level. Here, there is a lot of exposed limestone and from that limestone emerge freshwater springs.
From the sandy parking area at Gilchrist Blue you walk down a steep hill into the floodplain which is about 10 m (30 feet) above sea level. Here, there is a lot of exposed limestone and from that limestone emerge freshwater springs.
There are five named springs easily accessible at Gilchrist Blue Park; Blue Spring, Little Blue Spring (slightly west of Gilchrist Blue), Naked Spring, Johnson Spring, and Kiefer Spring. On our visit we found no reference to Kiefer Spring. Some anecdotal reports indicate a spring farther to the east of Johnson Spring emerging from a limestone escarpment. Swampy Sink is also listed as a spring in the park but on this day the sink was not flowing.
To find Johnson Spring hike east (to the right when facing Gilchrist Blue) into the forest on a well maintained trail. The first spring you will pass is Naked Spring where walking, hiking, and swimming are all now prohibited to protect the degraded spring.
Along the trail you pass a lot of scenes like this, ancient downed trees covered with leucobryum mosses.
Johnson Spring appears as an oasis in the forest surrounded by cypress knees, pictured here. Most of the knees close to the spring are covered with mosses.
At Johnson one can hike around the spring though the ground is squishy-to-wet so you have to beware of muck which will take your shoes, camera, and whatever else you happen to be carrying.
Also known as GIL101971, Johnson Spring has an elongated pool that measures about 35 feet (11 m) by 70 feet (21 m). Limestone is exposed at the vent, and there is an abundance of aquatic vegetation on the spring bottom.
The trail to Johnson Spring is well worn if not well marked.
The spring water is clear and bluish. A double spring boil is visible on the sprig surface over the vent. On this February afternoon the spring is surrounded by a lot of Butterweed in full bloom. Butterweed is also known as Cressleaf Groundsel (Packera glabella).
The spring run is about 14 feet (4 m) wide and a few feet deep. The run bottom is soft sand and mud with abundant algae. It flows southeast ward into the north side of the Santa Fe River.
No recent reliable data is available on the spring's discharge rate but on this day in 2020 the spring had a robust discharge. In the literature there is a note from 1997 indicating a discharge rate of 8.25 cubic feet per second. At 8.25 cubic feet per second Johnson would qualify as a 3rd magnitude spring, producing around 300 liters per second or about 26 million liters a day (about 7 million gallons a day). That sounds about right.
Arik the Giant
Follow the Johnson Spring Run south and southeast a short distance and you come across a great giant of a cypress tree.
Park officials have named the tree "Arik the Giant" and estimate the tree to be many hundreds of years old. Above, I stand by the 70-foot-tall cypress tree for scale.
Even without someone standing next to him Arik is an impressive tree. There are two even larger cypress a bit of a drive further north in the Holton Creek Tract, but they are much harder to access than Arik the Giant.
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Photo: Magdalena Wosinska, NYTimes.com
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