The Weeki Wachee River is a river in Hernando County,

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

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. It flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
accessed April 18, 2011 westwards from Weeki Wachee to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

at the Weeki Wachee estuary. The name is derived from the

Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, ...

: ''uekiwv'' /oykéywa, wi:-/ "spring" and ''-uce'' /-oci/ "small", signifying either a small spring or an offshoot of a town named Spring. The river is best known for its spring, and the Weeki Wachee Springs attraction built on the premises. The spring is the surfacing point of an underground river, which is the deepest naturally occurring spring in the United States. It measures about wide and long, and daily water averages 150 million gallons (644 million liters). The water temperature is a steady year-round.

References

* Jack B. Martin, Margaret McKane Mauldin: ''A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee: With Notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole Dialects of Creek'', University of Nebraska Press (2000). * ''The Miami Herald'': "For the mermaids, it's where the show springs eternal", by Jodi Mailander Farrell, 6 August 2006. (via Activa) Bodies of water of Hernando County, Florida Rivers of Florida Outstanding Florida Waters {{Florida-river-stub