“Riding with my mama

To Glen Springs pool

The water was cold

My lips were blue ...



Yeah, it was Dreamville

A long time ago

Light years from here

And the air smelled good

In Dreamville, in Dreamville”

The famous musician Tom Petty wrote “Dreamville” to commemorate growing up in Gainesville and swimming at the Glen Springs pool during his youth. And now, after decades of back and forth negotiations and failed attempts by the city to purchase and restore Glen Springs, an iconic natural and cultural resource, the stars may finally be aligning.

With Petty’s untimely death in 2017 and the resulting tidal wave of public grief and appreciation for this hometown rock star, Gainesville’s leaders may finally have the community support needed to make Glen Springs Park (aka Dreamville Park) a reality.

Gainesville is in the Springs Heartland of Florida but has only two artesian springs within the city — Boulware and Glen Springs. Boulware Spring, the city’s oldest public water supply, is already preserved near the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trailhead. Glen Springs has suffered from neglect for a half century, yet the significance of this spring is synonymous with the long history of Gainesville.

Glen Springs was once a natural and beautiful spring with traces of habitation by Native Americans for more than 3,000 years. In the 1920s the spring was still free-flowing. A local resident, Grace Ensign, remembered Glen Springs as a place where her family picnicked that was “natural,” “beautiful,” and “enormous.”

In 1926 the spring was converted to a popular swimming pool and recreation center by owner Cicero Addison Pound. Glen Springs provided the only public swimming opportunity in Gainesville until 1968. Before the advent of air conditioners and residential pools, one dime bought a full day of play and pleasure at the Glen Springs pool during Gainesville’s hot and humid summers. Glen Springs pool even served as the University of Florida swim team’s practice location for several years.

The Gainesville chapter of the Elks Club purchased the Glen Springs property and pool in the 1970s. Since that time, Glen Springs and the pool have declined due to surrounding urban development and neglect. Average flows are lower and nitrate concentrations higher, resulting in excessive algal growth. Soil erosion under the pool has resulted in a dangerous situation that could end in a local environmental disaster if the pool eventually collapses into Hogtown Creek.

It is against this backdrop that the Florida Springs Institute published the Glen Springs Restoration Plan in 2012. The Institute’s plan documented the technical feasibility of restoring Glen Springs and outlined a roadmap for achieving success. Now what’s needed is a groundswell of public support and the resolve to fulfill this dream.

Following publication of the Springs Institute’s plan, several prominent Gainesville leaders formed the Friends of Glen Springs (FROGS) advocacy group to raise money for restoration. Over a three-year period, the FROGS convinced the Gainesville Parks Department to put Glen Springs on a list for acquisition and collected commitments for up to $1 million of private donations. Ultimately, the Gainesville chapter of the Elks Club was unwilling to sell their Glen Springs property for the appraised amount and the FROGS disbanded in 2016.

Florida’s springs are in trouble and blighted throughout the state. Glen Springs is no different except for the smaller scale of these problems. “Dreamville” residents have the resources and power to work together to bring Glen Springs back from the brink of disaster. Worthington Spring in La Crosse was a similar, locally-popular attraction with a swimming pool and dancehall until it dried up in the 1950s. Perhaps by our collective will and actions we can save Glen Springs from a similar fate, and we can demonstrate that other springs can also be protected. Saving a small spring will give us hope and resolve to restore our larger springs.

With city acquisition of the Glen Springs property and site restoration, the Elks can avoid a disastrous collapse of their dilapidated pool and make the transition to an updated lodge at a new location. The people of Gainesville would acquire six acres of unique land contiguous to the Alfred A. Ring City Park and the satisfaction of showing that springs restoration in the heart of Tom Petty’s “Dreamville” is attainable.

Bob Knight, Ph.D., is director of the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute. This opinion piece is an update of “Restoring 'Dreamville'” published on Dec. 23, 2012, in The Sun.