Florida is not usually the first place that comes to mind when people think of topography but, across the panhandle, an unusual combination of Florida’s characteristic springs and dunes provides just that: steephead ravines! Steepheads are narrow canyons carved into ancient sand dunes by springs emerging from the surficial aquifer. Sometimes over eighty feet deep, Florida’s steephead ravines formed by several steps. First, when sea levels were higher, ancient sand dunes formed along what was then the coast. Over time, sea levels fell, but the sand dunes remained, marooned as inland hills. Next, Florida’s frequent rains soaked through the dunes and accumulated at certain layers to become underground aquifers. This water had to flow somewhere, and eventually some of it emerged at low points on the dunes to form small springs, or “steepheads”. These springs eroded backwards into the dune, carving the ravines. Shadowy ravine walls and the cool, clear water that carves them have created an unusual ecological community as well. Many plants which were present in Florida during the last ice age were forced to migrate north as the climate warmed, and are now found as far away as the Appalachian Mountains. Steepheads’ cool temperatures offered an alternative - the likes of trilliums, some native azalea species, northern hardwood trees, and mountain laurels present thirteen thousand years ago still grow in the shelter of their walls. To drop into a steephead ravine is to feel at once as though you have entered a world in a bottle, or fallen through a portal to strange underground mountain slopes.

If you’d like to visit a steephead ravine, you can do so by visiting Torreya State Park or the Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve.