Remembering Lu the Hippo, a Jacques Cousteau Film Shoot, and a Florida Citizen With Tusks
For more than sixty years, there was a hippopotamus living at Homosassa Springs who held honorary Florida citizenship by an act of the governor. His name was Lu, he was born in 1960, and when the State of Florida bought the property in 1989 to turn it into a wildlife park dedicated to native Florida species, plans were made to ship him out. Children protested. Letters were written. The governor stepped in and granted Lu honorary Florida citizenship, allowing him to remain at the spring for the rest of his very long life. Lu passed away in 2024, but his legacy at the park endures. The America250 initiative is the right moment to tell the story of a spring that has been improvising solutions like this since the early 1900s. At Homosassa Springs, a proud part of the Adventures Unbound family, we work at one of the strangest and most beloved roadside attractions ever to become a state park.
The History
Homosassa Springs in Citrus County has been a visitor attraction since the early 1900s, when travelers stopped to view the clear natural springs and local wildlife. The first piece of infrastructure was the “Mullet Train,” a rail line that ran near the springs and let passengers walk a short trail to view the first-magnitude spring while the cars loaded cedar, fish, and spring water for transport up the coast.
By the 1940s and 1950s, the site had become one of Florida’s early wildlife attractions, where visitors could observe alligators, black bears, panthers, and birds in semi-natural settings. It was marketed as “Nature’s Own Attraction” and became a popular roadside stop on Florida’s Gulf Coast. In the 1960s, the springs gained national attention when television studios filmed episodes of The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau and other nature documentaries at the spring, taking advantage of the underwater observatory that lets visitors stand below the waterline and look up into the spring run.
In 1989, the State of Florida purchased the property and reopened it as Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, refocusing the attraction on wildlife rehabilitation, education, and conservation of native Florida species. The park became a key site for rehabilitating manatees, and it remains one of the most reliable places in the state to see them up close in clear, warm spring water.
The deeper local history extends back to David Levy Yulee, who in the 1840s established a 5,000-acre sugar plantation along the Homosassa River. The Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins survive nearby, a 40-foot limestone chimney standing in the open as a reminder that this spring sits on a much older and far more complicated piece of Florida.
The Connection
The area was a vital, resource-rich environment for the Seminole, who migrated into Florida in the 18th century and made the spring country part of a much larger network of hunting and fishing grounds. Their presence here remains foundational to any honest telling of the springs’ story.
A visit today is a chance to stand where a hippopotamus once became a Floridian by gubernatorial decree, watch a manatee glide through 72-degree water, and step inside an underwater observatory that was already a tourist marvel when Jacques Cousteau’s camera crew arrived. It is not a tidy history, but it is an authentically American one, and Lu’s memory is part of what keeps it alive.
For more America250 stories from across our properties, visit Adventures Unbound’s America250 page.
