After leaving the museum we headed back to Gainesville stopping at The Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek for a late lunch. About halfway between Gainesville and Ocala, Cross Creek was the home of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings who wrote the book The Yearling which one the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. The book, about a young boy raising a baby deer or yearling, and has a sad ending. The whole family had tears in our eyes when we saw the movie at the drive in theater when I was a young boy.

The Menu

Rawlings lived on the shore of Orange Lake in Cross Creek which lies on a narrow peninsula between Orange Lake and Lake Lochloosa. Her home is now the Florida Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. When Rawlings was writing her The Yearling at Cross Creek my father was a boy and lived with his parents on a farm about fifteen miles to the west of Cross Creek near Micanopy.

The Yearling Restaurant was established in 1952 (the year I was born) and has been a long-standing local restaurant known for its southern cooking and local cuisine such as alligator tail and catfish. One of my favorites is the Cross Creek Special platter with gator, catfish and frog legs. When went there with family many years ago it also included cooter. The restaurant is decorated throughout in a Rawlings-Yearling theme with old movie posters, books, and old-time country memorabilia.  The food was very good and we left quite full.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings House in Cross Creek when I visisted on her birthday in 2018

Updated: 01-10-2026

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