Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Citrus County, Florida

Photograph: Homossa springs.png by Motwog · CC BY 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Citrus County attraction

Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park

Citrus County · Gulf Coast

A first-magnitude spring with an underwater observatory, and a home for Florida animals that cannot be returned to the wild.

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ABOUT THIS PLACE

People have been coming to this spring since the early 1900s, when a railroad along what is now Fishbowl Drive would put passengers off to walk down and look at it. The first underwater observatory, an iron tank with windows, went in during the 1940s. The Norris Development Company bought the original 50 acres and another 100 in 1964 and added animals and attractions, and after several changes of hands the county and then the state took it over. It is named for Elmyra Felburn Schiller, a benefactor of the state parks. The floating observatory still lets visitors stand below the surface and watch fish and manatees swim past. The animals here are native Florida species that cannot survive on their own: Florida panther, red wolf, whooping crane, black bear, bobcat, white-tailed deer, river otters and alligators, along with manatees under rehabilitation. Lu the hippopotamus, born at San Diego Zoo in 1960, lived here from February 1966 and was made an honorary Florida citizen by Governor Lawton Chiles. He died at the park on June 8, 2025, at 65, the oldest hippopotamus on record. The park is at 4150 South Suncoast Boulevard, Homosassa, opens at 9 and closes at 5:30, and has a 1.1-mile boardwalk trail

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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