There are trips where I carefully research every destination, map out exactly what I want to see, and arrive knowing enough history to understand what I’m looking at.
And then there are stops like White Springs Historic District.
My itinerary notes for this one were remarkably thorough:
“Figure we’ll just drive through and see the pretty houses.”
That was the plan.
We had already explored Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park and spent part of the day hiking at Big Shoals State Park, so by the time we reached White Springs, both Dusty and I were hurting.
No hiking trail. No miles of walking. Just some beautiful old buildings, a few photographs, and then on to whatever came next.
Instead, we met Teddy Bear.
But before I get to him, you need to understand why those pretty old houses were there in the first place.
Because this quiet little North Florida town once drew visitors from across the South.
And it all started with water that smelled like rotten eggs.
Before White Springs Was a Resort Town
White Springs sits along the Suwannee River in Hamilton County, Florida, and its story begins with the natural sulfur spring beside the river.
Long before hotels and tourists arrived, Indigenous people knew the spring and the surrounding landscape. Historical accounts and local traditions describe the mineral spring as a place associated with healing, where people came to bathe in and drink its water.
When American settlers began arriving in the area, those beliefs about the water followed.
A small community known as Jackson Springs developed around a ferry crossing during the early 1830s. Around 1835, plantation owner Bryant Sheffield purchased property that included the sulfur spring.
According to the story, Sheffield drank the water, bathed in it, and claimed that afterward he simply felt better.
Today, sulfur water might inspire you to wonder what crawled into the plumbing and died.
In the nineteenth century, however, mineral springs were serious business.
Sheffield became convinced enough of the water’s therapeutic properties that he constructed a simple log hotel and began encouraging friends from Georgia and the Carolinas to visit.
And people came.
The Spring That Built White Springs
As mineral-spring resorts became fashionable across the United States, the little settlement along the Suwannee River found itself sitting on exactly the kind of attraction people were seeking.
Jackson Springs eventually became White Springs, and the community grew into one of Florida’s earliest tourist destinations.
The arrival of the railroad made the town even more accessible.
Visitors poured into White Springs to “take the waters,” believing the sulfur spring could help with ailments ranging from rheumatism to kidney problems.
Hotels and boarding houses opened to accommodate them.
Businesses followed.
So did entertainment.
At its height, White Springs offered visitors restaurants, shops, a roller rink, moving-picture shows and, of course, the enormous bathhouse constructed around the spring itself.
We explored what remains of the White Sulphur Springs Bathhouse—and the story of the attraction that once brought thousands of people here—during our visit to the spring.
This wasn’t simply a watering hole beside the Suwannee anymore.
It was a resort town.
And as White Springs prospered, people built homes there.
Those homes—and the community that developed around them—are an important part of what survives today.
When the Boom Began to Fade
White Springs wouldn’t remain one of Florida’s premier destinations forever.
On February 24, 1911, fire swept through the town’s business district, destroying 35 structures, including hotels and businesses.
Then the world around White Springs began changing.
Advances in medicine gradually diminished faith in mineral-water cures. Florida tourism evolved, transportation improved, and travelers found new destinations.
The grand hotels disappeared one by one.
The bathhouse eventually fell into ruin.
Even the famous spring declined, its once-powerful flow diminishing dramatically over time.
The crowds that had built White Springs were gone.
But they left behind a town.
The White Springs Historic District
On September 19, 1997, approximately 1,200 acres of White Springs were added to the National Register of Historic Places as the White Springs Historic District.
At the time of its designation, the district included 81 contributing historic buildings along with other structures and sites connected to the community’s past.
That was the White Springs we had come to explore.
Although “explore” might be generous.
Remember:
Pretty houses. From the truck.
We were tired.
And Then Teddy Bear Pulled Up
While driving through town, we found a large, beautiful historic house and pulled over to take some pictures.
As we sat there, another vehicle pulled up beside us.
An older gentleman rolled down his window.
So I rolled down mine.
He wanted to know what we were doing.
Which was entirely reasonable considering we were two strangers parked outside someone’s home taking photographs.
We explained that we were visiting the historic district and admiring the house.
That was when our quick photo stop changed completely.
The man introduced himself as Teddy Bear.
And Teddy Bear knew this house.
He knew the man who currently lived there.
More than that, Teddy Bear told us he had spent an entire year painting the exterior himself.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just looking at an old house on a historic register.
I was talking to someone who had put his own hands on its preservation.
Then he made us an offer I still can’t quite believe I turned down.
“I Can Call Him…”
Teddy Bear offered to call the homeowner.
He thought the owner might let us come inside and see the house.
Now, under ordinary circumstances, there would have been absolutely no debate here.
A local offering to contact the owner of a historic home and possibly get me an impromptu tour?
Sir, I am already out of the truck.
Unfortunately, these were not ordinary circumstances.
We had just finished hiking Big Shoals.
Everything hurt.
Dusty hurt.
I hurt.
I suspect parts of my body I didn’t know existed had begun filing formal complaints.
And I didn’t want Teddy Bear bothering someone at home with no warning just so two exhausted travelers could stumble through his house.
So we thanked him and told him not to call.
Yes.
I know.
Future Ki also has questions for Past Ki.
The Tiny Schoolhouse Next Door
After saying goodbye to Teddy Bear, we moved on to another historic building nearby: a tiny one-room schoolhouse.
And I do mean tiny.
I’ve encountered quite a few historic schoolhouses during my travels, but this may be the smallest one I’ve seen.
By then, though, I was looking at White Springs a little differently.
When we talk about historic districts, it’s easy to reduce them to architecture.
Construction dates.
Styles.
Property boundaries.
Names on registers.
Those things matter. They help us understand what survived and why it deserves protection.
But preservation doesn’t happen because a building appears on a list.
It happens because people continue caring about it.
Sometimes that means an organization raises money to save a structure.
Sometimes a community fights to protect a neighborhood.
And sometimes it means a man named Teddy Bear spends a year painting an old house.
The Town the Spring Left Behind
We came to White Springs looking for remnants of a Florida resort town.
More than a century ago, trains brought visitors here to stay in grand hotels and bathe in sulfur water they believed could heal them.
Most of what those visitors knew is gone.
The hotels vanished.
The bathhouse became a ruin.
The crowds disappeared.
But White Springs itself survived.
People still live in these houses.
They maintain them.
They know who lived nearby.
They remember what used to stand in empty spaces.
They carry pieces of the town’s history that will never fit neatly onto an interpretive marker.
And every once in a while, one of them apparently spots two nosy travelers with cameras and decides to pull over.
What Stayed With Me
There are grander historic districts.
There are places with more surviving buildings, bigger museums and considerably more impressive visitor centers.
But that’s not what stayed with me about White Springs.
I remember Teddy Bear.
We had come looking for old buildings and accidentally met someone who had personally helped preserve one.
That’s one of the reasons I travel the way I do.
History isn’t only found in archives, museums and monuments.
It survives in landscapes.
In buildings.
In memories.
And in the people who still care enough to keep those places standing.
Sometimes you arrive somewhere and find exactly what the itinerary promised.
Sometimes what you came looking for disappeared decades ago.
And sometimes you pull over because you want a picture of a pretty old house…
and history rolls down its window and starts talking to you.
That wasn’t on the itinerary.
Those are usually my favorite parts.
We were only supposed to drive through White Springs and look at the pretty old houses.
Then a man named Teddy Bear pulled up beside us. 😂
What started as a quick stop turned into the story of a Florida town once built around a “miracle” spring—and an unexpected encounter with someone who had personally helped preserve a piece of its history.
📍 White Springs Historic District | White Springs, Florida
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