WATER & COAST
Wacissa River
Jefferson County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
A spring-fed river rising from twelve major springs and running down to the Aucilla.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The head of it is a cluster of springs pushing up clear water, and the put-in is at Wacissa Springs County Park, which is a busy place on a weekend. Below that the river runs clear enough to watch fish under the boat. Alligators, turtles, water snakes, wading birds and river otters are all ordinary, and the birding takes in limpkins, swallow-tailed kites, eagles and wood ducks. Goose Pasture sits about ten miles downstream with a public campground and a group camp, which makes a two-day trip workable. Further down is the Slave Canal, about five miles of waterway dug in the years before the Civil War to join the Wacissa to the Aucilla and move cotton to the coast. It never worked as intended. The rock stacked along its banks was put there by enslaved people and is still stacked there. Past the canal, the clear Wacissa water meets the Aucilla's blackwater and the two run on together
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