Tate's Hell State Forest is 202,000 acres (819 km2) of land in Franklin and Liberty counties in Florida. The forest is located near Carrabelle off US 98 along the Gulf coast and on St. James Island. At one time, Tate's Hell supported at least 12 major habitats including: wet flatwoods, wet prairie, seepage slope, baygall, floodplain forest, floodplain swamp, basin swamp, upland hardwood forest, sandhill, pine ridges, dense titi swamp thickets and scrub. Tate's Hell State Forest is an important hydrologic area and includes a section of the New River. The park's watershed provides fresh water into the Apalachicola Bay, the Carrabelle River and the Ochlockonee River.

The Apalachicola River is a river, approximately 160 miles (260 km) long, in the state of Florida. The river's large watershed, known as the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint (ACF) River Basin, drains an area of approximately 19,500 square miles (50,500 km2) into the Gulf of Mexico. The distance to its farthest head waters in northeast Georgia is approximately 500 miles (800 km). Its name comes from Apalachicola Province, an association of Native American towns located on what is now the Chattahoochee River. The Spanish included what is now called the Chattahoochee River as part of one river, calling all of it from its origins in the southern Appalachian foothills down to the Gulf of Mexico the Apalachicola.