Little Salt Spring: Oasis of Information

Related Cities & Topics:

View Full Size

Aerial view of Little Salt Spring, North Port, Florida in Sarasota County

Photo Credit: Photographed by Peter Masa; Image Courtesy of John Gifford

This remarkable site in southwest Florida is now a wooded preserve, where visitors can experience the wonders of history and nature.

Little Salt Spring is a unique archaeological resource. Not only is it one of the oldest in North America, it contains organic remains of plants, animals and people that are extremely well preserved.

Around a small sink hole in present-day Sarasota County, people continuously used the site from 12,000 to 5,000 years ago, when Florida was much drier. They camped in the upper bowl of the hourglass-shaped sinkhole, pounding stakes into the sides of the shaft to lower ropes to the water surface 90 feet below ground level.

The 110-acre wooded preserve around the sinkhole is an island in a sea of streets, homes, schools and golf courses.

Below a depth of 15 feet the water that flows up from Florida’s underground aquifer contains no dissolved oxygen. As a result, organic material such as bone and wood will never decay. Here 20th century divers have excavated a giant turtle with a 12,000-year-old wooden stake through its shell and the remains of a cook fire, a 9,000-year-old oak boomerang-like object and a host of artifacts from 6,000-year-old burials, including two beautiful greenstone pendants. Now owned by the University of Miami, the 110-acre wooded preserve around the sinkhole is an island in a sea of streets, homes, schools and golf courses.

Excerpted from a report by Bill Dudley and provided by John Gifford with funding from the Florida Dept. of State, Div. of Cultural Affairs and produced by the Florida Humanities Council on the web at:
www.flahum.org