Folks have been seeking the clear waters of Marion County for millennia.
But it was in the years following the Civil War that Silver Springs began to attract tourists from the North via steamboats up the Silver River, according to the website for Silver Springs State Park.
It wasn’t until the late 1870s that Hullam Jones and Phillip Morrell fixed a piece of glass to the bottom of a rowboat and created the first glass bottom boat.
Col. W.M Davidson and Carl Ray, who acquired rights to the springs, near Ocala, in 1924, perfected a gasoline-powered version of the glass bottom boat.
About 20 movies were filmed there, including “Rebel Without a Cause,” starring James Dean, “Distant Drums,” starring Gary Cooper, the James Bond movie “Moonraker,” “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and six Tarzan flicks, according to the website. Episodes of television shows such as “Sea Hunt” also were filmed.
