In the game
Rockstar’s Mount Kalaga National Park is the wild north of Leonida, and Trailer 2 shows the kind of country it is: tall pines, a sand road running dead straight through them, a truck raising dust, light coming through the trunks in bars. The Extended Look spends more time on roads like that. It looks like the interior of north Florida, and fans matched it to the state’s biggest stretch of protected forest, Ocala.
The match is landscape, not landmark. Ocala National Forest is where Florida keeps its longleaf pine, its sand pine scrub and its dirt forest roads, and it is the one place in the state where you can drive an hour and see nothing but trees. What Ocala does not have is a mountain; the “mount” is Rockstar’s addition, and we deal with it honestly on the Torreya page. Fans have matched this. Rockstar has not named it.
The real place
Ocala National Forest was set aside in 1908, the oldest national forest east of the Mississippi, and covers roughly 380,000 acres between the Ocklawaha and St. Johns rivers. Much of it is the Big Scrub, the world’s largest stand of sand pine, a strange, low, silvery forest on ancient dunes; the rest is longleaf pine flatwoods, cypress ponds and lakes. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings set The Yearling here.
The stars are the springs. Juniper Springs, with its 1930s stone-and-timber mill house and a seven-mile canoe run through wilderness, and Alexander Springs, a first-magnitude spring you can swim and snorkel in, are both inside the forest with campgrounds. Salt Springs is a third, slightly brackish and full of fish. The forest also holds Florida’s largest black bear population.
The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the road: a sand track between pines, straight to a vanishing point, and nobody on it.
Go there
SR 40 crosses the forest east to west and SR 19 north to south; Juniper Springs is on SR 40 and Alexander Springs is just off CR 445 to the south. Start at the visitor center on SR 40 at the western edge, then drive in. Swim at Alexander, walk the short trail at Juniper, or rent a canoe there for the run (book ahead; it is popular and shuttles are limited). Day-use fees at the springs are modest but change; check before you go.
Bring food and fuel; there is little of either inside the forest, and cell service is patchy. The nearest towns are Ocala to the west and Astor on the St. Johns to the east.
The honest warning: hunting. The forest is open to hunting in season, roughly late fall into winter, and you will hear rifles and meet trucks full of camouflage. It is safe if you stay on recreation areas and trails and wear something bright. Bears are shy but real; keep food in the car. Summer brings heat, thunderstorms and yellow flies at the springs.
Nearby
- Silver Springs and the glass-bottom boats: at the forest’s western gate, the most famous spring in Florida.
- Lake George and the St. Johns fish camps: the forest’s east side runs down to the big lake.
- Swimming holes: Rainbow and Ginnie Springs: an hour west, the springs you float and tube in.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.