Juniper Prairie Wilderness in Florida's Ocala National Forest was established in 1984 to protect about 54 square kilometers of remarkably varied terrain, including prairie, pine scrub, marshes, palm jungles, swamp hardwoods, and sawgrass. It also serves as the drainage basin for the Juniper River, whose headwaters at Juniper Springs are a first-magnitude artesian aquifer. Before protection, the area supported a small, isolated settlement known as Pats Island, occupied from the 1840s until 1935. Its history also entered American literature after Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings visited the last residents in 1933 and later used their stories in The Yearling, bringing this remote part of central Florida lasting cultural attention.