Wakulla County, Florida: History and Information

Wakulla County, Florida

Wakulla County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Crawfordville
Year Organized: 1843
Square Miles: 607

Court House:

PO Box 1263
County Courthouse
Crawfordville, FL 32326-1263

Etymology - Origin of County Name

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

Since Wakulla was probably a Timucuan 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.

Demographics:

History

Wakulla County was created in 1843. It may (although this is disputed) be named for the Timucuan Indian word for "spring of water" or "mysterious water." This is in reference to Wakulla County's greatest natural attraction, Wakulla Springs, which is one of the world's largest freshwater springs, both in terms of depth and water flow. In 1974, the water flow was measured at 1.23 billion gallons per day—the greatest recorded flow ever for a single spring.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 736 square miles (1,906 km²), of which, 607 square miles (1,571 km²) of it is land and 129 square miles (334 km²) of it (17.54%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Northeast: Leon County; Jefferson County

South: Gulf of Mexico

Southwest: Franklin County

West: Liberty County

Cities and Towns:

- Crawfordville (County Seat)

- Sopchoppy

city

Incorporated Area

- St. Marks

city

Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."

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