St. Francis Trailhead

During hunting season, all hikers must wear safety orange shirts or vests for safety's sake. If you are backpacking and camping overnight, leave word with friends or family as to when to expect you back. The section of the trail within the floodplain forest is an excellent area to photography a large variety of fungi. A 2.8-mile short loop enables visitors to catch the highlights of this section. The trail was built and is maintained by volunteers from the Florida Trail Association and is open to backpacking. Offering loops of three and seven miles, the St. Francis Trail works its way through floodplain forest habitats along the St. Francis Dead River to the ghost town of St. Francis at the south edge of the Alexander Springs Wilderness Area. St. Francis was a thriving river port in the late 1800s as steamboats worked their way from Jacksonville upriver along the St. Johns to Sanford. Here, they'd stop to exchange household goods for citrus and timber. The town faded away after river traffic vanished in the wake of railroads, but the St. Francis Trail lets visitors take a long walk through floodplain forests and pine flatwoods in search of the past.