Tallahassee, Florida

Where Tallahassee is

Tallahassee is the seat of Leon County in the eastern Panhandle of Florida, at 30.44°N, 84.28°W, about 20 miles south of the Georgia border and 25 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachee Bay. The city sits in the Red Hills, a belt of rolling clay hills unlike most of Florida; the highest ground downtown is over 200 ft, among the highest of any Florida city. There is no large river in town, though the Ochlockonee flows past to the west. Two universities, Florida State and Florida A&M, are within a mile of the capitol.

Florida is split between two time zones. Tallahassee is on Eastern Time; the boundary follows the Apalachicola River about 50 miles to the west, and the Panhandle beyond it, including Panama City and Pensacola, is on Central Time.

How it became the capital

When the United States acquired Florida in 1821 it had two colonial capitals, St. Augustine in the east and Pensacola in the west, 400 miles apart. The territorial council alternated between them until 1824, when a site roughly midway was chosen at an abandoned Apalachee village. Tallahassee remained the capital at statehood in 1845. Proposals to move the government to Orlando or another central city have been raised repeatedly, most recently in the 1960s, and rejected each time.

Population

Tallahassee had 196,169 people in 2020, the eighth-largest city in Florida. Jacksonville, the largest, had 949,611 and is about 165 miles east. The Tallahassee metropolitan area covers Leon, Gadsden, Jefferson and Wakulla counties, with about 385,000 residents, less than 2 percent of the state's 21,538,187.

The capitol

The Historic Capitol, completed in 1845 and given its dome and striped awnings in 1902, has been restored to that appearance and houses a museum. Directly behind it the New Capitol, opened in 1977, is a 22-story office tower designed by Edward Durell Stone with Reynolds, Smith and Hills. At 345 ft it is the tallest building in Tallahassee, and the observation deck on the top floor looks toward the Gulf on clear days.

Distances to other cities

Miami is about 480 miles to the southeast, farther from Tallahassee than Atlanta is.

Related maps

• Florida map — the whole state with borders, cities and counties.
• Florida county map · blank Florida map · printable Florida map.
• All 50 state capitals on one map, and the state capitals quiz.
• South region · South Atlantic division · Eastern Time Zone.