To quote the Seminole County Historic Marker describing the spring: ...On Lake Jessup are warm Sulphur springs, near which John and William Bartram camped during their excursion up the Saint John's River in 1765-1766. In the late 1870's, W.G. White built a store here, bringing goods by steamboat and trading with buyers who came by wagon and ox cart from all parts of Central Florida, as far south as Ft. Christmas. In the 1880s, after the coming of the railroads, White moved his business to Orlando. The site also became known as Clifton Springs, in honor of the hometown in New York of Dr. Henry Foster, a weathy grower who spent winders at Lake Charm in Oviedo.

Clifton Springs itself consists of several boils. There is one major boil in a small park which fills up a pool about 200 feet across, and then flows down a channel into Lake Jessup. The other boils are behind houses across the street from the park, so they can't be seen. The spring run from them flows into the park before reaching Lake Jessup. The main spring did have a strong sulphur odor, but it wasn't as noticable coming from the water flowing from the smaller springs. Unlike some of the other springs in the area where the water is crystal clear, Clifton Springs was very murky. This may be because of the much larger Lake Jessup nearby pushing it's massive volume of water up to where the water was seeping up from the ground at the boils.

Living in the spring were dozens of very large catfish that would jump every so often from the murky bottom of the spring. An alligator swam by and I spotted a large skeleton of some sort of fish with a very long snout, probably a gar fish, among some plants.

Main Spring:

Smaller Springs & Lake Jessup:
	Clifton Springs is definitely not one of the major springs in Florida. It isn't too impresive compared to some of the larger springs like Wekiva or Blue Springs, but it is still nice to visit. Not many people know about it, but that isn't very suprising. There aren't any signs for the spring so stumbling on it by accident would probably be your most likely way of finding it. With the thousands of cars that ride by a quarter of a mile away on the 417 bridge, I wonder how many of those drivers are aware of what is right next to them... Below, there is a short Youtube video that I took of the main spring.