Spring Bayou

Early pioneer Mary Ormond Boyer named Tarpon Springs for the leaping silver tarpon in the bayou near her cabin. Beneath the bayou’s surface, a spring intermittently “boiled” for several days during the year when Lake Tarpon, then called Lake Butler, reached a certain level and sent an outflow through an underground connection to Spring Bayou. That outflow also allowed salt water to travel back to Lake Tarpon and kill freshwater fish. In 1969, an earthen berm was built around the Lake Tarpon spring to seal its connection to Spring Bayou. An early city dock served shallow-draft steamboats, the only way winter visitors could reach Tarpon Springs in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, Spring Bayou had become the focal point of the “Golden Crescent” of Victorian homes and boathouses along its banks. Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church held its first Epiphany celebration in 1906, commemorating the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, and its annual Epiphany ceremony each January 6 draws tens of thousands of visitors to Tarpon Springs. Spring Bayou is also known as a winter home for numerous manatees seeking its temperate waters.

Tarpon Springs, Florida · United States