Hard to believe, but America’s favorite vacation state is in many ways America’s least known. Florida isn’t just beaches, theme parks and golf. Nor is it Miami Beach and Orlando alone, the North with palm trees, Latin America with jumbo stores. It’s also Arcadia and White Springs, Crystal River and Clewiston, a place of small towns rich in local arts and historic sites. Florida spreads across two time zones with 1,400 miles of coast from Panhandle bayous to Atlantic coral reefs.

Explored in 1513 — 107 years before Plymouth Rock; settled in 1565 — 94 years before Jamestown — Florida is as historic as America gets, yet as futuristic as space probes that rocket from Cape Canaveral.

Contained between past and future, more than you might imagine of Florida’s brick roads and lighthouses have been preserved. Bat towers, ferries, forts, historic main streets, relic railroads, river ox-bows, yesteryear mansions too. Here are the heritage landscapes - the cane fields, cattle ranches, fishing villages, horse farms and orange groves - that keep company with Florida’s still vibrant rural past.

Every region of the state claims its Blue Springs, its seafood festivals or their equivalents. Everywhere folk-life nestles and purrs. It’s in the drawl, in the salsa. It’s out your window wherever you drive. The trick, of courses, is to stop the car, walk and sample. Florida. You already know it. Know it better. Enjoy it more.