City Profile: Marianna

By VISIT FLORIDA staff
Published: March 14, 2008
Last Updated On: November 28, 2011

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Marianna

Waterfalls, walk-through caves and underground rivers make this little known city a great place to take an outdoorsy vacation.

There's a natural born what's-the-rush quality about Marianna, 65 miles west of Tallahassee, which makes hanging out its best attraction. Not to say there aren't significant things to do.

Florida Caverns State Park has the only walk-through caves in the state. The cavern trail covers about a quarter mile. The caves are slivered between the surface and aquifer, so that roots of surficial trees often poke through cave tops while, in rainy weather, sections of cave flood and blind crayfish emerge from underground streams. It's here where the Chipola River swirls underground before rising near the old log flume at the start of the paddling run, one of Florida's most beautiful paddling trails. The biggest dam in Florida backs up big Lake Seminole and gives rise to Three Rivers State Park. Blue Spring pours forth a first magnitude rush of water for diving and swimming. County back roads appeal to cyclists, with slight elevations, farms all around, here and there passing a gracious antebellum mansion, peanut processing plant, maybe a cotton gin.

It's here where the Chipola River swirls underground before rising near the old log flume at the start of the paddling run, one of Florida's most beautiful paddling trails.

People cherish the country-in-town look of downtown Marianna where Lafayette Street takes a couple of curves atop the hill past the Civil War Battle of Marianna obelisk and the gazebo in the grassy little triangulated courthouse park; past the five-story old Chipola Hotel now a retirement home, past the Mediterranean-styled post office which, though architecturally out of place, nonetheless rates as a favored Marianna curiosity.

The state's highest waterfall – a cascading 67 feet in Washington County at Falling Waters Stae Park; the state's highest riverine bluffs – a towering 150 feet above the Apalachicola River in Liberty County at Torreya State Park, and Gulf County's mysterious Dead Forest in the still waters of the Chipola River are all less than an hour's drive from Marianna. Nearby, too, in Gadsden County is an "art trail" which links the galleries and antiques stores of Havana, Quincy and Greensboro.