Cross Creek, FL

Made famous by the writings of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who moved to the small unincorporated town in 1928, the settlement is located in southeastern Alachua County where Cross Creek connects Orange and Lochloosa Lakes. Historically, Cross Creek has been a center for bass, speckled perch, and bream fishing, frog gigging, gator and duck hunting, and airboat recreation. The town offers fishing camp services, the Florida famous Yearling Resaurant, and Marjorie Rawlings’ home where she wrote The Yearling and Cross Creek, books that became award-winning movies. The Rawlings house and orange grove is now a state historic park and destination for Florida school children who examine her lifestyle and prowl nature trails leading to Orange Lake. Visitors often travel to nearby Island Grove and find her grave site that is usually covered with wooden writing pencils and toys of the deer she wrote about.