Caladesi Lookout Tower

From a February trip to Caladesi Island State Park...














"The concrete foundation before you once supported a 60-foot observation tower. The steel structure, donated to the park by the Florida Board of Forestry, was erected by park rangers in 1969. For almost 15 years it served as an observation point for park visitors and staff, offering panoramic views of the Gulf of Mexico and St. Joseph's Sound. The tower gradually deteriorated in the harsh condition of the island environment and was dismantled in the early 1980s."

Penny Pines at Hillsborough River State Park

On a recent trip to Hillsborough River State Park, I spied two stone markers. From across the parking lot, they looked like tombstones, so morbid curiosity led me to take a closer look. Turns out they are commemorative markers for the Penny Pines and Millenium Forest projects at the park.

















"A Penny Pines Forest
Planted by the
Florida Society,
Daughters of the American Revolution
Dedicated to Posterity
1940"

The Penny Pines program was a national program to raise money to plant trees in national forests. The program was the brainchild of Margaret March-Mount, who is also credited for getting the support of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The second marker is an update on the status of the Penny Pines at Hillsborough River
















"In 1940, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution the Florida State Society DAR planted at this site a 'Penny Pine Forest,' comprised of commercial timber.

"Starting in 2002, the Florida State Society DAR began the project of replanting this forest among the descendants of the 'Penny Pines' using native trees and shrubs typical of a long leaf pine habitat. the goal of this reforestation project is to create a natural forest that would have existed centuries ago.

"Forest dedicated on February 22, 2003"

Further reading: "Planting plan blends forestry, genealogy" Brandon Times, February 21, 2003

Cuban Bread

Somewhere, hopefully, there is a sociologist or anthropologist studying how and why local traditional foods appear on local public school menus. Growing up in Texas, it was burritos; teaching in north Florida it was sweet potato casserole. But today I'd like to draw that sociologist's, that anthropologist's, attention and yours to the case of Cuban bread in Tampa's school cafeterias.

For decades, Ybor City's La Segunda Bakery has made fresh, crusty loaves of Cuban bread for nearly 200,000 students in the Hillsborough County School District. Recently, demands to eliminate trans-fats from the lunchroom threatened to end this tradition. Fortunately, the bakery was able to tweak the recipe, cut the lard, and keep the contract.

The scent of Cuban bread has been a part of Ybor City for over one hundred years. In the nineteenth century, Cuban bakers stretched dough into long loaves, allowing more slices to be cut from a single loaf. Immigrants brought this bread style to Florida, where it lent itself to the creation of the Cuban sandwich. A palm frond placed on each loaf before it is baked creates a natural split the length of the bread. For decades, family-owned bakeries turned out hundreds of loaves each morning. The loaves were trundled down brick and dirt streets on carts or trucks to deliver families' daily bread. On each porch a nail stuck out from the wall by the front door, and upon this nail the delivery man impaled the bread.

Although many of the bakeries have gone out of business, a handfull still produce fresh Cuban bread to accompany each meal. Friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and business associates linger in cafes of a morning, dunking toasted and buttered slices of bread into steaming cups of cafe con leche. By enjoying local Cuban bread with their lunches, Tampa's students are partaking in a tradition that has been this city's the staff of life for more than a century.

_________

Further Reading:

Cuban Bread Video from Mauricio Faedo's Bakery Tampa Florida USA

"Dough! Not My Job: Cuban Bread Maker" (Tampa Tribune, April 30, 2007)

Kitchen Warfare's Cuban Bread (Tampa Style)

Visit the Ybor City Museum State Park to see a historic bakery and its oven (the museum is in the former Ferlita bakery), as well as the nail by the casita door where bread was delivered.

Marjorie's Outhouse

"The outhouse . . . stood on a direct line with the dining room windows. One fortunate diner might sit with his back to it. The others could not lift their eyes from their plates without meeting the wooden stare of the unhappy and misplaced edifice. They were fortunate if they did not meet as well the eye of a belated occupant, assuring himself stonily that he could not be seen." (from "The Evolution of Comfort," in Cross Creek, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings [Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942])

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park preserves or recreates Rawlings' house down to the minute details, including the gray paint on the screen door of the outhouse, intended to shield the user from view, but rather giving that unfortunate the appearance of a gray, mossy monster. There's even a red cloth flag, a system worked out by one of Rawling's guests to indicate when the outhouse was occupied. In Cross Creek, Rawlings recounts how she vowed to use any windfalls of money to pay for indoor plumbing, being disatisfied with the outhouse as well as icy outdoor showers in the wintertime. With the $700 she earned for Jacob's Ladder, she was able to install a bathroom: "The formal opening of the bathroom was a gala social event, with a tray of glasses across the lavatory, ice and soda in the bathtub, and a bouquet of roses . . . ."

Although Rawlings did acknowledge that she was better off at her house than were many of her neighbors when it came to water, her desire for convenience and comfort are echoed by Ma Baxter's wish for a well in The Yearling. And as Rawlings had to postpone her bathroom to pay for mortgages, car repairs, and poor citrus crops, so did Ma Baxter have to wait for her well:

"Ever' spring, I'd figger to git your Ma a well dug. Then I'd need a ox, or the cow'd bog down and perish, or one o' the young uns'd put in and die and I'd have no heart for well-diggin', and medicine to pay for. Bricks so turrible high--When I begun diggin' oncet, and got no water at thirty feet, I knowed I was in for it. But twenty years is too long to ask ary woman to do her washin' on a seepage hillside." (Penny Baxter to his son Jody, in The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

_________________

Further reading about outhouses:

"Honor has outhouse restorer over the moon: Historic latrine in Cocoa to be rebuilt near church" Florida Today, September 6, 2008

"Bushnell man finds opportunity in outhouses " St. Petersburg Times, September 21, 2008

Florida Outhouses, by Kevin McCarthy, 2002

Nature Calls: The History, Lore, and Charm of Outhouses, by Dottie Booth, 1998

Happy Birthday, John Gorrie

Dr. John Gorrie, inventor of the first air conditioning machine, would have been 206 years old today. For his contributions to medicine and making life in the South bearable, he has a state park and two schools (one in Jacksonville and one in Tampa) named after him. A statue of Dr. Gorrie represents Florida in Washington D.C. as part of the National Statuary Hall.

"Improved Process for the Artificial Production of Ice" U.S. Patent Number 8080, issued May 6, 1851

Paynes Prairie

I moved to Florida after what had been up to then a lifetime of living in Texas. The shift from the big city of Dallas to the much smaller city of Gainesville was abrupt in many ways, but one of the most unexpected adjustments to be made was to get used to the trees that are EVERYWHERE! I couldn't see anything. Out West, if you're driving along the highway, you can see houses and farms and towns way before you get there. In the East, houses and farms and towns tend to be surprises because of all the vegetation shielding them from view. Within a few weeks at UF, I felt claustrophobic while outdoors. Until one afternoon when I went for a drive south of town and all that foliage parted and I emerged onto Paynes Prairie.

What a relief it was to see the horizon again!

My undergraduate botany and ecology courses in Texas focused on tall grass prairies rather than wet prairies, so it was bewildering to walk along the boardwalk into the prairie and be over water and amongst non-grassy plants. Spotting a herd of buffalo heightened this sense of being out of synch with time and space. Nevertheless, over the next several years, the prairie gave me a place to exhale.

Good thing I didn't live there when it was all one big lake.

For more information about Paynes Prairie:

Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park

Paynes Prairie: The Great Savanna, A History and Guide, by Lars Andersen (Pineapple Press, 2003)

Friends of Paynes Prairie

Devil's Millhopper

What could be more fun than a hole in the ground?!

This summer, the family visited Devil's Millhopper State Park near Gainesville. I hadn't been there for a decade or more, since I was in grad school at the University of Florida. Devil's Millhopper is a park that features a 120-foot-deep, 500-foot-wide sinkhole. A 236-step wooden staircase winds down to the bottom. (Walking down 236 steps while outside is an odd thing for us flatlanders. Walking up 236 steps is popular with local residents who incorporate the sinkhole into personal fitness routines.) It's a beautiful and peaceful place, with shade trees and trickling spring-fed springs.

Here's how the State Park service explains the name:

"Devil’s Millhopper gets its unique name from its funnel-like shape. During the 1880’s, farmers used to grind grain in gristmills. On the top of the mill was a funnel-shaped container called a 'hopper' that held the grain as it was fed into the grinder. Because fossilized bones and teeth from early life forms have been found at the bottom of the sink, legend has it that the millhopper was used to feed bodies to the devil. Hence, Devil’s Millhopper."

At the park, there is a nature trail, and a small interpretive ceter where you can see artifacts left behind by Native Americans, the Spanish, American explorers, and other who have visited the site over the past 10,000 years.

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Information about Florida sinkholes:

Florida Department of Environmental Protection

University of Florida IFAS

Frogs!

"Time's fun when you're having flies." -- Kermit the Frog

In a state closely associated with with reptiles, the amphibians are sometimes overlooked. However, organizations such as the Southwest Florida Amphibian Monitoring Network and the Hillsborough River Watershed Alliance's Frog Listening Network are keeping their eyes - and definitely their ears - open. It's important work, since amphibians can be indicators of the health or decline of our environment.

But for those of you who aren't the type to be convinced by gentle green throat-clearings, there is the movie Frogs!, starring 1970s vintage Sam Elliot, Ray Milland, and Joan Van Ark. Filmed in part at Eden Gardens State Park and Panama City Beach, Frogs! shows what happens when you spray too many chemicals on the hoppy creatures. That's right, nature gets even. The film's poster is a bullfrog with a severed hand in its mouth.

Perhaps those amphibians are just upset because they just read Ralph Stoutamire's 1952 publication, Bullfrog Farming and Frogging in Florida. Florida's frog industry was but a tadpole, but Stoutamire gave advice on the design and management of commercial frog farms. The best chapter is the "Statement of F. B. Cramer, Sr., President of the Southern Industries, Inc., Frog Farm Located Just North of Tampa, Florida." Page 35 shows Mr. Cramer himself, a respectible looking man wearing a tie, with his spectacles tucked into his shirt pocket as he holds a large spotted dangly-legged frog. To feed his frogs, he relies heavily on fiddler crabs found on bay beaches (Page 37 shows his special crab-catching apparatus). He sells the legs and arms to canners, and tans frog skins to be made into leather "ladies shoes, belts, purses, key rings, the covering of artificial bait for fishing and other novelties." The photos are great -- to illustrate how big the frogs are, a lovely lipsticked young lady holds two enormous amphibians by the feet. On the next page, four grim frog hunters pose with headlamps and gigs. Evidently Wauchula was the centrepointe for catching wild frogs, with 29,000 pounds shipped out in just 5 months of 1941. Stoutamire: "As a wild bullfrog seldom weighs more than 2 pounds, even the pessimistic must admit that is a lot of frogs."

Stoutamire's pièce de résistance is 16 pages of "Famous Ways to Serve Giant Frogs." Yes, 16 pages of 1950s frog recipes such as "Giant Frog Sandwich Spread," "Jellied Great Bullfrog Creamed Salad," and "Giant Bullfrog Fondue." I kid you not.

Lake Wauburg

One of the perks that come along with being part of the student body, faculty, or staff at the University of Florida is the Lake Wauburg Recreation Center. This is an outdoor facility with picnic pavilions, canoes, paddleboats, sailboats, water skiing, a ropes course, trails, and more, all just a few miles south of Gainesville on US 441. It's beautiful, and historic, nestled on the edge of Paynes Prairie, north of Micanopy.

Prehistoric Native Americans, Spanish cattle ranchers, Seminole chiefs -- all are part of the story. The lake and the park take their (misspelled) name from Frederick Warburg, a European merchant who, with Moses Levy, established a Jewish settlement near here in the 1820s.

In 1918, the University YMCA bought some land on the west shore of Lake Wauburg to be used as a student recreation center. When the YMCA closed, the University of Florida took over the Camp Wauburg property. In the 1930s, several buildings -- including a house, lodge, and boathouse -- were built on a hill overlooking the lake. In the 1960s, the University acquired some additional property on the south side of the lake, which was developed as Lake Wauburg South recreational area in the 1980s. In 1971, the state's first preserve, Paynes Prairie, opened across Lake Wauburg from the University's facility.

The Lake Wauburg Recreation Center continues to operate today, funded with student fees, and administered by the College of Health and Human Performance.

Please let me know if you have any information to add about Lake Wauburg's history!

Lake Wauburg History (University of Florida)

Additional Reading:

Moses Levy of Florida: Jewish Utopian and Antebellum Reformer, by Chris Monaco (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2005)

The Story of Historic Micanopy, by Caroline B. Watkins (The Alachua County Historical Commission, Gainesville, Florida, 1976)

Paynes Prairie: The Great Savanna: A History and Guide, by Lars Anderson (Pineapple Press, Florida, 2004)

NOTE: Even though "Wauburg" is itself an incorrect spelling, it has become the preferred name, not "Wauberg."

Honeymoon Island

It's Spring Break around here, so we headed to Honeymoon Island for an afternoon at the beach. This is one of my favorite beaches -- it's clean, the sand is good, it's easy to get to, there's nature, it's quiet, has clean bathrooms, a snack bar,a gift shop, and convenient parking. If you want to ride your bike, the Pinellas Trail goes over the causeway to Honeymoon Island State Park. Once in the state park, you can ride a ferry over to Caladesi Island, the #2 beach in America for 2006, according to Dr. Beach.

In the 1880s, Caladesi and Honeymoon were both part of Hog Island, cleverly named so because of the hog farm there. In 1921, a hurricane cut Hog Island into two islands (separated by the cleverly named Hurricane Pass). But before long, someone put more effort into naming things out there on that Gulf barrier island. In the late 1930s, Clinton M. Washburn bought the property, and renamed it Honeymoon Island as a marketing ploy involving newlyweds and thatched beach huts.

In the 1950s, Washburn sold Honeymoon Island to Arthur Vining Davis. After Davis died, Hyman Green owned the island, and had grand plans for developing it. A financial situation led Green to sell Honeymoon Island to the State of Florida in the early 1970s (the State had already purchased Caladesi in 1966). Honeymoon Island State Park opened in 1982.

For more information about the islands, the parks, and scheduled events, visit the State Parks' website or the website of the Friends of the Island Parks.