Paynes Prairie is a basin of wet grassland south of Gainesville, about 21,000 acres of open savanna crossed by U.S. 441 on a long causeway. It is a sinkhole-riddled lowland that drains through the Alachua Sink on its north side, and depending on the rain it can be a marsh, a meadow or a lake. The naturalist William Bartram described it in 1774 as the great Alachua savanna. Around 1871 the Alachua Sink clogged and the basin filled into a real lake. Steamboats carried passengers and cargo across it for years. Then in 1891 the sink reopened and the lake drained away in a matter of weeks, leaving at least one steamboat stranded in the mud. The prairie takes its name from King Payne, a Seminole chief of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Earlier, in the 1600s, the Spanish ran La Chua, one of the largest cattle ranches in colonial Florida, on its edge. It became Florida's first state preserve in 1971. Bison were brought in from Oklahoma in 1975 to restore an animal that once grazed Florida, and a herd of Florida Cracker horses, a heritage breed descended from Spanish stock, also roams the prairie. Alligators line the ditches along the highway in large numbers, and sandhill cranes winter there by the thousands. The La Chua Trail on the prairie's north rim leads out to the Alachua Sink itself, the drain that decides whether the basin is a lake or a meadow.
Getting there
29.5847, -82.3196
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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