“In South Florida it’s a challenge to get people to comprehend what it means to be in a national park. Some of those users engage in activities that would be unthinkable in Yellowstone or Yosemite, including poaching, overfishing, and tearing up fragile shoreline habitats by beaching boats in fragile sawgrass.īremen stresses that these impacts can be mitigated, and that education is key. “We don’t have fences and entrance stations out there, so many people are spending time in the park and don’t even know it,” says park ranger Gary Bremen. Many do so without ever realizing they’ve entered a national park. Ninety-five percent of Biscayne’s 173,000 acres (70,000 hectares) are covered by water, and most of its half million annual visitors arrive by boat. A long fight to save these islands from development eventually gave birth to the park in 1968. It protects the northern end of the third longest coral reef tract in the world, the longest stretch of mangrove forest on Florida’s east coast, the southern part of Biscayne Bay, and 50 islands of the northern Florida Keys. Large protected natural areas like Biscayne National Park may be the last, best chance for gaining a fuller understanding of the area's prehistory.Just five miles (eight kilometers) from the heart of downtown Miami, Biscayne National Park is a wild oasis where coral reefs bring the biological diversity of a rain forest to the doorstep of one of America’s largest cities.īiscayne is the largest marine park in the National Park System. Much of southeast Florida's native human heritage is now beneath the roads and buildings of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and surrounding communities. By the mid-1700s, virtually all of the area's indigenous people had been wiped out.Īround this time, Creeks from neighboring Georgia and Alabama began to expand into what is today Florida, eventually giving rise to tribes like the Seminole and Miccosukee. Diseases like smallpox and measles swept through native populations in epidemic proportions. The arrival of European explorers to the area in the 16th century was the beginning of the end for Florida's native peoples. At the mouth of the Miami River, a village developed, and nearby a still-not-well-understood feature now called the Miami Circle was constructed. Having to spend less time working crops meant that there was more time for things like art and religion, and complex social structures developed. Unlike many of the groups of people in other parts of the United States, and even in other parts of Florida, who began to rely heavily on corn and other crops, the Tequesta took advantage of the bounty of the sea. The people from this time period in southeast Florida are today known as the Tequesta. They created pottery and established trade networks. Piles of discarded conch and whelk shells began to grow, and these shell middens offer archaeologists opportunities to learn about these people.Īs populations grew and settlements split from one another, smaller, more distinct cultures developed. Many archaeologists believe there is much to learn about the area's earliest native peoples at the bottom of Biscayne Bay.Ģ500 years ago, the people in this area (now referred to as the Glades culture) had become less nomadic and more settled. For several thousand years after the time of the Paleo-Indians (now referred to as the Archaic Period), there is little physical evidence of native peoples in the Biscayne area, but that may be because evidence of these sites is now submerged. This large, open expanse likely served as a place for nomadic peoples to hunt for mammoths, mastodons and other animals of the period.Īs the ice age ended and waters began to rise, the bay filled in. The area of what is today Biscayne Bay was probably a broad, dry savannah. When sea levels were very low during the ice age, the Florida peninsula was probably twice as wide as it is today, with most of that additional landmass being on the state's west coast. Physical evidence such as the campsite at the Old Cutler fossil site are well documented along the bay shoreline. Native Americans knew these waters long before it was named Biscayne Bay.īiscayne's human history begins over 10,000 years ago with the migration of Paleo-Indians down the Florida peninsula.
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