Silver Springs is a group of artesian springs that feed into the Silver River in Marion County, Florida. It is the largest artesian spring in the world and the site of the oldest commercial tourist attraction in Florida, and was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971. Its main features are the glass-bottom boat tours on the river, which have operated there, in various forms, since 1878. Long privately owned and operated, the springs area was formerly the site of a small amusement park, Silver Springs Nature Theme Park.
The springs became a destination for tourists traveling up the St. Johns and Silver rivers via steamboat in the late 19th century. It changed hands several times over the years, with various operators introducing boat rides and related attractions. One such planned attraction introduced a group of rhesus macaques to an island in the Silver River; the monkeys quickly escaped and formed freeranging troops still present in the area. Starting in 1916 Silver Springs became a shooting location for Hollywood films; films shot there include Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) and five subsequent Tarzan movies and Revenge of the Creature, the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon.
In the 1990s the first thorough scientific studies of the springs were conducted and wildlife rehabilitation was started. That year, the State of Florida bought the underlying land, while private businesses continued to operate the attractions and concessions. Environmental issues such as nitrate runoff, related to development in the region, adversely affected the park's health and tourist revenues declined. On January 23, 2013, the Florida Cabinet announced the state would take over the facility after the end of the 2013 summer season, and that the park operators would receive a $4 million buyout of their lease. In October 2013, the State of Florida took over operations of Silver Springs Nature Theme Park and combined the property with the adjacent Silver River State Park to form Silver Springs State Park.
The springs were the first tourist attraction in Florida. In the 1860s, Samuel O. Howse bought the 242 acres surrounding the headwaters of the Silver River. Several years after the American Civil War, the springs began to attract tourists from the North via steamboats up the Silver River. Silver Springs gained national attention through journals and guidebooks, and became a mandatory stop on the "grand tour" of Florida.
In the late 1870s, Hullam Jones and Phillip Morell developed the glass-bottom boat and the glass-bottom rowboat, respectively; these were used to take visitors on the river to give them a unique view of the springs. The first railroad to reach Silver Springs, the Silver Springs, Ocala and Gulf Railroad, went into operation by the end of 1879 and transported people and goods from the river landing at the headspring area to the nearby town of Ocala. In 1880, former president Ulysses S. Grant visited the area. In the 1890s, commercial-sized glass-bottom boats were developed. H.L. Anderson purchased Silver Springs and the surrounding area from Howse in 1898.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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