Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park protects a twenty-one-thousand-acre savanna in north-central Florida whose significance lies in both its long human history and its ever-changing water-driven landscape. The prairie was shaped by Spanish ranching, the Alachua Seminole stronghold at Cuscowilla and later Paynes Town, and later conflict during the Second Seminole War. Its basin drains through Alachua Sink, but wet periods have repeatedly transformed it into a broad lake, most dramatically from 1871 to 1891. Twentieth-century canals and dikes altered that hydrology until Florida acquired the land in 1970 and began restoration. Today it is valued for diverse habitats, abundant wildlife, and unusually open scenery.

Gainesville, Florida · USA