Wekiwa Springs head spring
— the clear bowl the river starts in.
Not only on a wall.
Wekiwa Springs head spring, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The Wekiwa head spring rises in a shallow limestone bowl just north of Orlando, in Apopka. Roughly forty-two million gallons of seventy-four-degree water surface here each day and begin the run of the Wekiva River, twenty-six miles north to the St. Johns. The bowl is clear enough on a still afternoon to count the fish against the sand. Cypress and live oak ring the bank.
The place, in three passes.
Wekiwa Springs sits in Apopka, in northwest Orange County, about fifteen miles north of downtown Orlando. The head spring is a second-magnitude vent in the Floridan aquifer, surfacing roughly forty-two million gallons of water a day. It is the start of the Wekiva River, which runs twenty-six miles north to join the St. Johns near Sanford. The state park covers seven thousand acres of sand pine scrub, longleaf flatwoods, and cypress swamp. The Wekiva River Protection Area, established 1988, holds the surrounding watershed largely undeveloped.
The water in the head spring holds at seventy-four degrees through every month, the constant of the upper Floridan aquifer that feeds it. Visibility on a still afternoon runs to the sand bottom: eight feet at the shallow edge, deeper at the vent itself. The spring discharges roughly forty-two million gallons every twenty-four hours. The flow leaves the bowl as the Wekiva River, designated a National Wild and Scenic River in 2000, one of only two such designations in Florida. Cypress knees and tape-grass crowd the banks within the first quarter-mile downstream.
Wekiwa Springs State Park opens daily from eight in the morning until sunset, with the head spring open for swimming when bacterial counts allow. A modest day-use fee covers entry; a separate fee covers the canoe and kayak livery at the head, which rents craft for the river paddle north toward Wekiva Island. The park holds more than thirteen miles of hiking trails through sand pine scrub. Cabins and a primitive campground sit on the inland side. Weekend mornings fill the parking lot by ten; weekdays carry the quietest swim.
