Tallahassee is the Florida that most visitors to the state never see — the capital, set on rolling red-clay hills in the Panhandle, with a canopy of live oaks and Spanish moss, two major universities, and almost none of the beach infrastructure that defines the Florida of popular imagination. It is distinctly Southern in character, closer culturally to Georgia than to Miami, and worth a day or two for its unusual landscape, its plantation history, and one of the better state capitol complexes in the Southeast.
We have friends in Tallahassee. We stayed here when cycling from California to St Augustine on the Florida coast.
A Little Background
The area was home to the Apalachee people, whose principal town here was a significant centre of the Mississippian culture. Spanish missions arrived in the seventeenth century; the Apalachee were largely destroyed by raids from British-allied forces from Carolina in 1704, a catastrophic event that depopulated the region for decades. Tallahassee was chosen as the site for the Florida territorial capital in 1824, roughly equidistant between the existing settlements of Pensacola and St Augustine.
Florida’s antebellum economy was built on cotton plantations in the red-clay hill country around Tallahassee — a part of Florida’s history that is less known than it should be. Florida joined the Confederacy in 1861 and was the only Confederate state capital east of the Mississippi that was never captured by Union forces, a fact that local Confederate memorial culture made much of for more than a century. The modern city is defined by state government, Florida State University, and Florida A&M University, the latter founded in 1887 as a historically Black institution.
What to See and Do
The Florida Historic Capitol Museum occupies the restored 1902 capitol building — a handsome domed structure in the shadow of the 1977 state capitol tower directly behind it. The interior has been restored to its early-twentieth-century appearance, with the original senate chamber, house chamber, and governor’s suite open for self-guided tours. Free admission. The juxtaposition of the old and new capitol buildings is one of the better pieces of accidental architectural theatre in American state politics.
Mission San Luis is a reconstructed seventeenth-century Spanish mission and Apalachee village on a hill west of downtown — the only site where you can walk through a full-scale reconstruction of both a Spanish colonial mission complex and a contemporary Apalachee town. The council house (reconstructed to the original scale) is the largest thatched building in North America. Adult approximately US$5.
The Museum of Florida History in the R.A. Gray Building downtown is a thoughtful survey of the state from its Indigenous civilisations through the present day — the mastodons, the Spanish period, the plantation economy, the Seminole Wars, the tourist boom. Free admission.
Maclay Gardens State Park, north of the city, has 28 hectares of formal ornamental gardens around a 1920s house on Lake Hall — most spectacular from January to April when the camellias and azaleas are in bloom. Beyond the garden, the park has lakeside trails and a swimming beach on the lake. Admission approximately US$6 per vehicle.
Wakulla Springs State Park, 25 kilometres south of Tallahassee, contains one of the largest and deepest freshwater springs in the world — a clear, limestone-filtered pool that discharges approximately 400,000 litres of water per minute and maintains a constant temperature of 20°C year-round. Glass-bottom boat tours run over the spring vent; mastodon bones have been recovered from the sediments here. Swimming is permitted. The 1930s lodge in the park is a Florida state treasure. Admission approximately US$6 per vehicle.
Getting There
Tallahassee International Airport (TLH) is small but connected to Atlanta, Charlotte, and several other hub airports. The city is on I-10, the main east-west Panhandle highway; Jacksonville is 260 kilometres east, Pensacola is 300 kilometres west. Amtrak does not serve Tallahassee. A car is essential.
Cost and Hours
Tallahassee is affordable by Florida standards. Mid-range hotels run US$110–170 per night. Most major attractions cost under US$10. Allow one to two days.