Quick History page 2

Prehistoric Land and Sea
 Southwest Florida was shaped and reshaped by centuries of flooding during the Ice Ages. Each time the polar ice sheets reformed and lowered the surrounding sea level, another layer of sand and shell was deposited, creating the limestone and sandy sediment that underlie much of Collier County today. The southern tip of Florida was last submerged about 25,000 years ago.

The American Serengetti
 Rich fossil finds show that this region was once home to camels, mastodons, mammoths, and huge herds of bison, deer and wild horses. The animal population reached its peak during the Pleistocene Period about 10,000 years ago, when the number and variety of animals here approached that of the big game region of the African Serengetti. Gradual changes in climate and vegetation contributed to their extinction.

South Florida's First People
 The first humans reached Southwest Florida at least 10,000 years ago, when the climate was colder and drier. Living in small, widely scattered bands, these first Floridians or Paleoindians, survived by hunting and fishing and by gathering wild plant foods. The earliest archaeological evidence of man in Collier County was discovered in 1980 at the Bay West Site, northeast of Naples.

The Calusa
 Centuries before Columbus, Florida's lower Gulf coast was controlled by the powerful Calusa Indians. Once numbering as many as 10,000 people, the Calusa were ruled by a single chief, supported a nobility and strong military force, dug canals, built huge mounds of shell and earth for their temples and important buildings, and collected tribute from towns and villages reaching all the way across southern Florida to the Atlantic. Highly skilled Calusa artisans also created elaborate masks and wood carvings for religious and ceremonial purposes, such as those discovered by Frank Hamilton Cushing on Marco Island in 1895.

European Arrival
 Juan Ponce de Leon discovered and claimed Florida for Spain in 1513 and led the first recorded European exploration of the Gulf coast. He returned to colonize Southwest Florida in 1521, but was mortally wounded by Calusa warriors. Other Spanish explorers attempted the conquest of Florida over the next forty years. The expeditions failed, but decades of warfare, enslavement and runaway epidemics of European diseases destroyed the Calusa and their culture.

The Seminoles
 By the early 1700's, small bands of Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama began making their way into Florida. Eventually, these breakaway groups of Indians joined with escaped black slaves and refugees from other tribes to forge a new identity as the Seminole. Ongoing disputes and skirmishes with white settlers eventually led to Government pressure to move the Seminoles to reservations west of the Mississippi River.