Cross Creek is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Alachua County Alachua County ( ) is a county in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 278,468. The county seat is Gainesville, the home of the University of Florida. History Prehistory and ear ...

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 ...

, United States. It is located on Cross Creek, a short stream connecting

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

and Lochloosa lakes.

Geography

Cross Creek is located at . The community is situated in the extreme southeastern corner of Alachua County and is approximately 20 miles southeast of the county seat, Gainesville, and 24 miles north of

Ocala Ocala ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Florida, United States. Located in North Central Florida, the city's population was 63,591 as of the 2020 census, up from 56,315 at the 2010 census and making it the 43rd-most popul ...

in Marion County. It is bisected by a navigable waterway, Cross Creek, which connects the two large lakes of Orange and Lochloosa, thus the community is on a narrow isthmus between these two water bodies.

History

Cross Creek is well known as the home of the American author

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953)
ac ...

. She wrote four of her books while actually living there, including the

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-winning

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The Yearling ''The Yearling'' is a novel by American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published in March 1938. It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It was the best-selling ...

'', which was adapted as the 1946

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

of the same name, and her memoir, ''Cross Creek'', which was adapted as the 1983

. Cross Creek was settled in the 19th century. Rawlings house may have been built in the 1880s. Rawlings reported that Cross Creek was home to just seven families, five white and two black, when she moved there in 1928. The roads were unpaved and there was no electrical power or ice available. Electrical power lines reached Cross Creek in 1948. The road through Cross Creek (Alachua County Road 325), was paved about the same time, after World War II. The road to Micanopy, the River Styx Road (Alachua County Road 346), was not paved until 1962. The population of Cross Creek began to grow during the 1950s and 1960s when local man Ben Wheeler dug canals and built a number of houses, many with waterfronts. A number of people moved into "The Creek" from other areas including the northern United States, thus the 'cracker' character of "The Creek" was permanently altered. By the late twentieth century the community would have been nearly unrecognizable to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The unique geographical environs and the presence of a few older houses (including Mrs. Rawlings' home, now both a Florida State Park and a National Historic Site), have helped Cross Creek to retain some local color.

Education

The nearest

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high school and elementary school are in Hawthorne, fifteen miles distant. There is a charter school in Micanopy, nine miles away.

References

Unincorporated communities in Alachua County, Florida Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida Unincorporated communities in Florida {{AlachuaCountyFL-geo-stub