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This booklet was written with the sponsorship and help of the Friends of Jonathan Dickinson State Park. One of the reasons the members of this non-profit organization love our park is that it is an oasis of calm sandwiched between rapidly growing towns: Jupiter-Tequesta to the South and Stuart and Hobe Sound to the North. Within these 11,500 acres are a wild and scenic river and the same wildlife that were seen by generations of Native Americans, pioneer growers and railroad builders. And for many, the park is a poignant part of our own family histories. We come here to enjoy, to reflect and to remember.

We hope you will, too. We want to be sure you’re aware of all the activities available. And we think you’ll enjoy them even more if you know something about the park’s history, its ecology and some of the issues that park managers face in trying to preserve its wild and scenic nature.

James D. Snyder
Pharos Books
Jupiter, FL

A View That Spans Centuries

Most folks think of South Florida as too “new” to have much history. After all, its oldest building (Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse) is just over 150 years. As recently as a century ago, the entire 250-mile coastal strip from Titusville to Key Biscayne contained barely a thousand people.

But now take another look! Start your visit to Jonathan Dickinson State Park by climbing the tower atop Hobe Mountain and you’ll see why.

Look west and you’ll gaze on much the same undisturbed landscape that ancient Indians did at least 5,000 years ago.

Look east to the ocean and see where Spanish galleons glided on the Gulf Stream on their way to Spain with gold and silver from South America.

Southeast, just beyond your gaze, is Jupiter Inlet, which was entered by Ponce de León in 1513.

Looking south, many of the east-west highways cover the original trails used by Seminole Indians and their U. S. Army pursuers in the mid-nineteenth century.

Look down right below you and imagine an army base with 7,000 men and 400 structures springing up almost overnight in 1942. Then imagine the whole complex just a few years later: a ghost camp of concrete slabs.

The Native American centuries

Several centuries before the Spanish explorer Ponce de León arrived at Jupiter Inlet, Indians were using the trails and river in today’s state park. Because these early Indians (not to be confused with the later Seminoles) left no sign of a written language, it’s difficult to pinpoint how long they lived in any one area or who ruled what domain. A rough sketch would show the large Calusa kingdom based around Estero Bay (near Fort Myers). A second was the Miaymi, who lived around the rim of Lake Okeechobee. Smaller groups – perhaps sub-clans or vassals of the first two – included the Aiys around Indian River Inlet, the Jeaga at Jupiter Inlet and the Tequesta where Miami is today.

The Jeaga of Jupiter Inlet were blessed with an abundance of food, so that the planting of crops was rare. Great schools of fish swam along the beach. Giant loggerhead turtles crawled ashore in summertime and laid delicious eggs. Pools by the inlets teemed with snook and the river exploded with swarms of mullet. Estuaries were full of clams and the mangrove roots held an endless supply of oysters. It was also easy to dig out and dam up fish ponds so as to keep live fish and turtles.

On land, deer abounded and bear were common. Wild fruits such as pond apple and berries such as the saw palmetto added zest to the subtle change of seasons. In the rivers upstream were manatee, alligators and otters.

Regardless of their political structure, the Indian tribes of South Florida shared common traits. These hunter-gatherers made fire and cooked with pottery vessels. And like the Midwestern Indians known as “mound builders,” they erected sand and earth mounds for their temples and graves.

However, their civilization was unique because their implements were largely limited to those they found in South Florida. Lacking flints for arrow heads, they made deadly arrows of hard reeds and sharpened them in fire. The soft Florida limestone was useless for hammers and axes, but the Indians found dozens of ways to use the wealth of shells they found on beaches. Most valuable was the giant conch, which they drilled with holes and lashed with deer gut to make strong wooden handles for picks and shovels. Smaller conch shells were used as jewelry or weights for fishing nets.

At home, it was the job of women to cook and make pottery. Unlike many early peoples, a typical piece of pottery was decorated only with simple lines or checks — perhaps merely as a way to identify its owner. But the men, apparently with more time on their hands, made intricate shell and wood carvings. Using shark teeth, set in wood handles, they carved the outer conch shells with wavy lines as jewelry to hang on long strands from their belts. Their finest carving was done in the wood of pond apple or mangrove tree. They might make images of gods for dancers to wear on masks in their religious processions. Or they might produce wooden plaques with animal heads identifying their clan. These would be set on long poles around houses or high on a palmetto-thatched temple.

One reason it’s hard to pin down the domain of a given tribe is that it moved around depending on the season or hunting conditions. For example, in the summer when insects could become thick inland, whole villages would travel to the beach to feel the cool breeze, feast on oysters or go hunting in the ocean for game fish.

In the 16^th century, when gold-laden Spanish fleets began to ride the Gulf Stream towards home in late summer and early fall, Indians had another reason to come to the beach. Sometimes it was to trade when the passers-by sent launches in for water and sometimes to plunder a wrecked ship. Although the Indians had no practical use for gold (except to admire how it glittered in the sun) they soon realized it could be traded for items they truly valued – kettles, knives, hatchets and other “modern” conveniences of the day.

It was in this context that Jonathan Dickinson State Park got its name. In 1696 England was beginning to challenge Spain’s domination of South Florida when the schooner Reformation, owned by a leading Philadelphia family, ran aground on Jupiter Island about five miles north of today’s inlet. The Jeaga Indians who lived along the inlet were loyal to the Spanish and proceeded to make life miserable for Jonathan Dickinson and the 26 English colonists who survived the wreck. It was only through their wits — and devout prayer, as the Quaker Dickinson described it — that the party was spared and sent on a harrowing march up the shoreline that ended weeks later in the hands of the more tolerant Spanish at St. Augustine. Out of this grueling experience came a book by Dickinson that became a best seller for years in America and Europe.

In 1950, when officials in Tallahassee asked the leaders of tiny Hobe Sound what they should name their new state park, they came up with a name associated with the most memorable local event they could recall. And that’s how Jonathan Dickinson State Park wound up with a name that had nothing to do with anything within its boundaries!

Well, almost. Many early Spanish charts contain a marker for ships passing Hobe Sound. They cited Hobe Mountain in the park as the “Bleach Yard.” Translation: before the old dune grew vegetation, its glistening white sugar sands reminded sailors of billowing sails left out to dry. And so it became a landmark for navigators.

The Seminole era

In 1783, as part of the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, England took possession of Florida. By that time, there weren’t enough left of the once flourishing Calusa, Miaymi, Aiys or Jeaga to care much what white people did in South Florida. European diseases and/or slavers had all but wiped out an Indian population that may have reached 20,000 in its prime. When the Spanish prepared to abandon their capital of St. Augustine, they rounded up all the indigenous Indians they could find so as to ship them off to Cuba to work in the sugar fields. They could locate no more than a hundred souls.

During the next thirty or so years, South Florida nearly reverted to a primitive, pristine wilderness. There were no roads and no port for ships to enter. The waterways again became the province of mosquitoes, mangroves and manatee. Bears, panthers and alligators ruled the land. They were joined by two accidents of history. The Spanish had lacked enough ships on their exodus to Cuba and had to leave behind many cattle, hogs and horses. These castoffs soon began to multiply in the plains and pine woods of South Florida.

The stage was now set for another human incursion. The young, swaggering United States was becoming The Promised Land for eager European immigrants, all expecting cheap homesteads in a land of unlimited opportunity. In border states like Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, Cherokees and other native tribes found themselves chased away from their ancestral lands by people who waved pieces of paper in their faces claiming themselves as the owners. Indians (who believed that the land belonged to everyone) found themselves heading south into the territory of Florida. Sometimes they were joined by African slaves who had escaped from southern plantations.

The two peoples had something to offer one another. The Indians generally knew how to manage animals, and they were soon becoming America’s first cowboys as they began to herd the wild Spanish cattle. The escaped slaves often had farming skills, which the Indians hadn’t bothered much about. Before long the two had reached a workable modus vivendi: the Indians “officially” would be owners of the escaped slaves, but the latter would live in their own agricultural villages, almost unrestricted except for the obligation to pay their Indian protectors part of their harvest.

This arrangement was working pretty well during the 1820s when Anglo-European farmers began pressing into Florida as well. Again, the white farmers saw the Indians and Africans as a faceless amalgam of dark skinned peoples and began calling them “Seminoles,” Spanish slang for “runaways” or “fugitives.”

During this time, a few white settlers grew sugar and citrus along the Indian River north of Jupiter Inlet. Like other Florida farmers, they often clashed with the Seminoles.

The more that leaders in Washington heard about conflict in Florida, the more agitated they became. The U.S. had forgiven Spain $5 million in debts in exchange for the territory, and Congress expected a return on its “investment” from farming and commerce. Before long Washington was aflame with debate on how to contain the “Seminole threat” and an army of 4,000 was raised to march into South Florida, round up the offending Indians (who numbered no more than 4,000 counting women and children) and send them out west to reservations.

In January 1838, where Indiantown Road crosses the river in Riverbend Park, the Battle of the Loxahatchee was fought, effectively ending the Second Seminole Indian War. Although some 300 Seminoles actually ambushed a U.S. army force during a march down the well-worn military trail towards Jupiter Inlet, the half-starved Indians were beaten back by overwhelming numbers and eventually forced to surrender. Some of the archeological sites in Riverbend and Jonathan Dickinson parks relate to that bloody and decisive battle.

How a railroad changed the region

In the years afterward, vegetation reclaimed the old military trails, the wooden stockade forts collapsed and the area around the Loxahatchee remained almost unsettled. Even when a lighthouse was built at Jupiter Inlet in 1860, the lack of roads or railroads meant that tons of materials had to be off-loaded 35 miles north at Fort Pierce Inlet and hauled down the Indian River by barge.

By 1890 steamboats were plying the Indian River from Titusville to Jupiter, and in that year entrepreneurs built a narrow-gauge, one-track rail line linking Jupiter and the tip of Lake Worth, seven miles to the south. Now farmers were beginning to rim the 22-mile lake and at its hub was a little town that would become Palm Beach. But farmers still faced a big handicap. They had to rely on steamboats and ox carts to bring their crops to the nearest rail line in Jacksonville, and often the produce arrived bruised or rotten. Henry Flagler, who had already amassed a $500 million fortune as John D. Rockefeller’s right hand man at Standard Oil, vacationed in nearby St. Augustine one winter and quickly grasped an opportunity calling for the kind of investment that very few could afford. He determined to build a railroad down the east coast of Florida all the way to a southern terminus where his line could receive shiploads of cheap pineapples from Cuba and goods from South America.

CHAPTER ONE

A Microcosm of Florida History

A View That Spans Centuries

The Native American centuries

The Seminole era

How a railroad changed the region