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Over
10,000 years of Southwest Florida History is on display at our three museum facilities for all
to enjoy...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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TheSeminoles
By the early 1700's, small bands of CreekIndians
from Georgia and Alabama began makingtheir
way into Florida.
Eventually, thesebreakaway groups of Indians
joined with escapedblack slaves and refugees from
other tribes toforge a
new identity as the Seminole. Ongoingdisputes and
skirmishes with white settlerseventually led to
Government pressure to move theSeminoles to
reservations west of the MississippiRiver.
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More County History
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Celebrate Florida's
colorful past March 31, & April 1, 2007!
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