When I went to Tallahassee, I didn’t expect to find Florida wilderness so close to the city, but it’s here in a nearly natural state at the wonderfully intriguing Tallahassee Museum, a place where “North Florida's history, nature and wildlife intersect.”

This is an extraordinary museum – 52 acres of natural Florida where there’s something that looks like a zoo, but not quite… It’s more like an open trail that takes you through the woods and along the shores of Lake Bradford so you can see white-tailed deer, bald eagles, red wolves, hawks, owls, otters, panthers, bobcats, black bears, and other animals and reptiles.

The 1880s Big Bend Pioneer Farm is here, too, and so is an 1897 one-room schoolhouse, the Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church, a Seaboard Air Line Caboose, and the Bellevue Plantation home.

You can drop in on workshops on a variety of topics, including woodstove cooking and photography. Hang around and see the journey wool takes from the fleece of a sheep to the socks on your feet. In May, they opened the ‘Tree to Tree Adventures’ so now you can swing from ropes, cross log bridges and skim through the sky.

History is more than dates. It is people and what they do. At the Tallahassee Museum you get to see how early settlers lived and worked and played – all while being surrounded by some of Florida’s most delightful scenery and beautiful wildlife.

When you go...

Tallahassee Museum
6325, 3945 Museum Rd, Tallahassee, FL 32310
(850) 575-8684

PLACES TO REMEMBER