Alachua ( ə-LATCH-oo-ay) is the second-largest city in Alachua County, Florida and the third-largest in North Central Florida. According to the 2020 census, the city’s population was 10,574. The city is part of the Gainesville metropolitan area, which had a population of 339,247 in 2020.

Alachua has one of the largest bio and computer graphics sciences sectors in Florida and is the site for the Santa Fe College Perry Center for Emerging Technologies.

Evidence of habitation by pre-historic Paleo-Indians exists in several documented locations within the San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park. In the historic era, the primary town for the Potano tribe that lived throughout North Central Florida plus was within San Felasco. This town became the site of the first Spanish doctrina (mission subsequent to a resident priest) in the Florida interior in 1606, Mission San Francisco de Potano, and it was the last to be unaccompanied by the Spanish in the in front 1700s due to raids instigated by the British. Nearby to the north along the Santa Fe River was complementary mission, Santa Fe de Toloca, which was part of the mission chain stretching from St. Augustine to Pensacola.

The Place slightly northeast of the current City of Alachua was in the course of the first decided by Americans in Florida in the yet to be 19th Century. Many participants in the Patriot War that attempted to force the annexation of Florida to the United States from the Spanish resided there, including the Dell family. The truthful date of first concurrence is unknown, but the community first known as Dell’s Courthouse then later renamed as Newnansville is, along taking into account Micanopy, the oldest distinctly American concurrence in the State. The Methodist church that started next the Dell intimates continues to this daylight and is the oldest in the State, First United Methodist Church of Alachua.