Pre-Columbian people Humans arrived on the Florida Peninsula about 12,000 years ago when the ocean was about lower than today, and the peninsula was double its current size. These earliest people are called
Paleo-Indians. They were primarily hunter–gatherers who followed large game, such as
mastodons, horses, camels, and bison. Much of the land was far from water—most fresh water was contained in glaciers and polar ice caps. As a result, Florida was an arid landscape with few trees, dominated by grasslands and scrub vegetation. owl
totem, found buried in muck near
Hontoon Island, on display at
Fort Caroline National Memorial Around 9,000 years ago, the climate warmed, melting much of the polar ice caps and many glaciers, creating a wetter environment and submerging half the peninsular shelf. As Paleo-Indians now did not have to travel as far to find water, their camps became more permanent, turning into villages. With evidence of a wide variety of tools constructed around this time, archeologists note the transition into
Archaic people. The Archaic people made tools from bone, animal teeth, and antlers. They wove fibers from plants such as cabbage palms and saw palmettos. A few burial sites have been excavated—including the
Windover Archaeological Site in Brevard County near
Titusville—that provide evidence of burial rituals. Archaic peoples interred their dead in shallow
peat marshes, which preserved much of the human tissue. Further climate change between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago led to the Middle Archaic period; evidence suggests that human habitation near the St. Johns River first occurred during this era. Populations of indigenous people increased significantly at this time, and numerous settlements near the St. Johns have been recorded from this era; the banks of the St. Johns and its arteries are dotted with
middens filled with thousands of shells, primarily those of
Viviparus georgianus—a freshwater snail—and oysters. The advent of regional types of pottery and stone tools made of flint or limestone marked further advancements around 500
BCE. The Archaic people transitioned into settled groups around Florida. From the central part of the state north, along the Atlantic Coast lived people in the
St. Johns culture, named for the most significant nearby natural formation. Around 750
CE, the St. Johns culture learned to cultivate corn, adding to their diet of fish, game, and gourds. Archeologists and anthropologists date this agricultural advancement to coincide with a spread of archeological sites, suggesting that a population increase followed. When European explorers arrived in north Florida, they met the
Timucua, numbering about 14,000, the largest group of indigenous people in the region. The later
Seminole people called the river
Welaka or
Ylacco. These forms may derive from the
Creek wi-láko, "big water", a compound usually applied to large rivers that run through lakes; the St. Johns forms and borders numerous lakes. Alternately, the Seminole name may derive from
walaka (from
wi-alaka, "water" and "coming"), perhaps a reference to the river's slow discharge and the tidal effects on it. The name is sometimes rendered as "Chain of Lakes" in English. In 1955 an extremely rare
Timucua totem representing an owl was found buried and preserved in the St. Johns muck off of
Hontoon Island. The figure may signify that its creators were part of the owl clan. Representing different clans of the Timucua, two more totems—in all, the only totems in North America to have been found outside of the Pacific Northwest—shaped like a pelican and otter were found in 1978 after being snagged by a barge at the bottom of the river.
Colonial era overlooking the St. Johns River Though the first European contact in Florida came in 1513 when
Juan Ponce de León arrived near
Cape Canaveral, not until 1562 did Europeans settle the north Atlantic coast of the peninsula. Early Spanish explorers named the river
Rio de Corientes (River of Currents). Ribault was detained after he returned to Europe. In 1564,
René Goulaine de Laudonnière arrived to build
Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St. Johns River; they called the river
Rivière de Mai because they settled it on May 1. An artist named
Jacques LeMoyne documented what he saw among the Timucuan people in 1564, portraying them as physically powerful and not lacking for provisions. The French and Spanish continued to spar over who would control the natural resources and native peoples of the territory. The Timucua, who had initially befriended the French, were not encouraged to make the Spanish allies because of colonial governor
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés' abhorrence of
French Protestantism and his view that the Timucuan beliefs were "Satanic". By 1573, the Timucua were in outright rebellion, testing the governor's patience and forcing Spanish settlers to abandon farms and garrisons in more interior parts of Florida; the Spanish could not persuade the Timucua to keep from attacking them. Over a hundred years later, missionaries had more success, setting up posts along the river. Spanish Franciscan missionaries gave the river its current name based on
San Juan del Puerto (St. John of the Harbor), the
mission established at the river's mouth following the demise of the French fort. The name first appeared on a Spanish map created between 1680 and 1700. The Timucua, as other groups of indigenous people in Florida, began to lose cohesion and numbers by the 18th century. A tribe located in modern-day Georgia and Alabama called the
Creeks assisted with this; in 1702, they joined with the Yamasee and attacked some of the Timucua, forcing them to seek protection from the Spanish who forced them into slavery. The Creeks began assimilating other people and spread farther south until they were known by 1765 as
Seminoles by the British, a term adapted from
cimarrones that meant "runaways" or "wild ones". The Seminoles employed a variety of languages from the peoples the Creeks had assimilated:
Hitchiti,
Muskogee, as well as Timucua. Between 1716 and 1767, the Seminoles gradually moved into Florida and began to break ties with the Creeks to become a cohesive tribe of their own. The St. Johns provided a natural boundary to separate European colonies on the east bank and indigenous lands west of the river. 's sketch of alligators on the St. Johns, created either in 1773 or 1774 After Florida came under the
Kingdom of Great Britain's jurisdiction in 1763,
Quaker father and son naturalists
John and
William Bartram explored the length of the river while visiting the southeastern United States from 1765 to 1766. They published journals describing their experiences and the plants and animals they observed. They were charged by
King George III to find the source of the river they called the Picolata or San Juan, and measured its widths and depths, taking soil samples as they traveled southward. William returned to Florida from 1773 to 1777 and wrote another journal about his travels, while he collected plants and befriended the Seminoles who called him "Puc Puggy" (flower hunter). William's visit took him as far south as Blue Spring, where he remarked on the crystal clear views offered by the spring water: "The water is perfectly diaphanous, and here are continually a prodigious number and variety of fish; they appear as plain as though lying on a table before your eyes, although many feet deep in the water." Bartram's journals attracted the attention of such prominent Americans as
James Madison and
Alexander Hamilton. The success of these journals inspired other naturalists such as
André Michaux to further explore the St. Johns, as he did in 1788, sailing from Palatka south to Lake Monroe, and gave names to some of the plants described by the Bartrams' journals. Michaux was followed by
William Baldwin between 1811 and 1817. Subsequent explorers, including
John James Audubon, have carried William's
Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida with them as a guide. In 1795, Florida was transferred back to Spain which lured Americans with cheap land. A former loyalist to Britain who left
South Carolina during the
American Revolutionary War, a planter and slave trader named
Zephaniah Kingsley seized the opportunity and built a plantation named Laurel Grove near what is now
Doctors Lake, close to the west bank of the St. Johns River, south of where
Orange Park is today. Three years later, Kingsley took a trip to Cuba and purchased a 13-year-old
Wolof girl named
Anna Madgigine Jai. She became his common-law wife, and managed Laurel Grove while Kingsley traveled and conducted business. The plantation grew citrus and sea island cotton (
Gossypium barbadense). In 1814, they moved to
a larger plantation on
Fort George Island, where they lived for 25 years, and owned several other plantations and homesteads in what is today Jacksonville and another on
Drayton Island at the north end of Lake George. Kingsley later married three other freed women in a polygamous relationship;
Spanish-controlled Florida allowed interracial marriages, and white landowners such as James Erwin, George Clarke, Francisco Sánchez, John Fraser, and Francis Richard Jr.—early settlers along the river—all were married to or in extramarital relationships with African women.
Territorial Florida and statehood The first years following Florida's annexation to the United States in 1821 were marked with violent conflicts between white settlers and Seminoles, whose bands often included runaway African slaves. The clashes between American and Seminole forces during the establishment of the
Florida Territory are reflected in the towns and landmarks along the St. Johns named for those who were directly involved. Even before Florida was under U.S. jurisdiction, Major General
Andrew Jackson was responsible for removing the Alachua Seminoles west of the
Suwannee River, either killing them or forcing them farther south towards Lake County, in 1818. Jackson's efforts became the
First Seminole War, and were rewarded by the naming of a cattle crossing across a wide portion of the St. Johns near the Georgia border—previously named Cowford—to Jacksonville. The result of Jackson's offensive was the transfer of Florida to the U.S. Following the Seminole Wars, a gradual increase in commerce and population occurred on the St. Johns, made possible by steamship travel.
Steamboats heralded a heyday for the river, and before the advent of local railroads, they were the only way to reach interior portions of the state. They also afforded the citizens of Jacksonville a pastime to watch competing races. By the 1860s, weekly trips between Jacksonville,
Charleston, and
Savannah were made to transport tourists, lumber, cotton, and citrus. The soil along the St. Johns was considered especially successful for producing sweeter oranges.
Florida's involvement in the
U.S. Civil War was limited compared to other
Confederate states because it had a fraction of the populations of states that had been developed. Florida provided materials to the Confederacy by way of steamboats on the St. Johns, although the river and the Atlantic coasts were blockaded by the U.S. Navy. One action in Florida's role in the Civil War was the sinking of the , a Union
paddle steamer used for patrolling the St. Johns to keep materials from reaching the Confederate Army. In 1864, near Palatka, Confederate forces under the command of Capt.
John Jackson Dickison captured, burned, and sank the USS
Columbine, making her perhaps the only ship commandeered by the Confederacy. The same year and farther downriver, Confederates again sank a Union boat, the
Maple Leaf, which struck a floating keg filled with explosives and settled into the muck near
Julington Creek, south of Jacksonville. Part of the shipwreck was recovered in 1994, when it was discovered that many Civil War-era artifacts, including
daguerreotypes and wooden matches, had been preserved in the river muck.
Confederate Captain John William Pearson named his militia after the
Ocklawaha River called the Ocklawaha Rangers in the
American Civil War. Prior to the civil war, Pearson ran a successful health resort in
Orange Springs. After the civil war Pearson's Orange Springs resort declined in popularity due to the increasing attention to nearby
Silver Springs—the source of the Silver River—at the turn of the 20th century, popularizing the Ocklawaha. Georgia-born poet
Sidney Lanier called it "the sweetest waterlane in the world" in a travel guide he published in 1876. The river gave
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings access to the St. Johns from her homestead at
Orange Lake. The region served as a major fishing attraction until a decline in water quality occurred in the 1940s, and since then further degradation of the river and its sources have occurred. In particular,
Lake Apopka earned the designation of Florida's most polluted lake following a chemical spill in 1980 that dumped
DDE in it. It has experienced chronic
algal blooms caused by citrus farm fertilizer and wastewater runoff from nearby farms. Although the Spanish had colonized Florida for two centuries, the state remained the last part of the east coast of the United States to be developed and explored. 's house in
Mandarin A
New York Times story reporting on Disston's progress in 1883 stated that before Disston's purchase and the subsequent development, the only places worth seeing in Florida were Jacksonville and St. Augustine, with perhaps an overnight trip on the St. Johns River to
Palatka; by 1883 tourist attractions had extended south. More attention was paid to the St. Johns with the increasing population. Florida was portrayed as an exotic wonderland able to cure failing health with its water and citrus, and the region began to be highlighted in travel writings. To relieve his bronchitis,
Ralph Waldo Emerson stayed briefly in St. Augustine, calling north Florida "a grotesque region" that was being swarmed by land speculators. Emerson poignantly disliked the public sale of slaves, adding to his overall distaste. Following the Civil War, however, famed author
Harriet Beecher Stowe lived near Jacksonville and traveled up the St. Johns, writing about it with affection: "The entrance of the St. Johns from the ocean is one of the most singular and impressive passages of scenery that we ever passed through: in fine weather the sight is magnificent." Her memoir
Palmetto Leaves, published in 1873 as a series of her letters home, was very influential in luring northern residents to the state. s to Florida, sparking a state-led battle against the invasive plant One unforeseen aspect of more people coming to Florida proved to be an overwhelming problem.
Water hyacinths, possibly introduced in 1884 by Mrs W. W. Fuller, who owned a winter home near Palatka, grow so densely that they are a serious
invasive species. By the mid-1890s, the purple-flowered hyacinths had grown to reside in of the river and its arteries.
Land boom An Englishman named
Nelson Fell, persuaded by Disston's advertisements to make his fortunes in Florida, arrived in the 1880s. An engineer by trade, Fell purchased near
Lake Tohopekaliga to create a town named
Narcoossee, which had a population of more than 200 English immigrants by 1888. A spate of poor luck and tense British-American relations followed, prompting Fell to spend some years investing in infrastructure in
Siberia, but he returned in 1909 with ideas of developing wetlands in central Florida. He was further encouraged by the political promises of Governor
Napoleon Bonaparte Broward to
drain the Everglades during his 1904 campaign. In 1910 Fell purchased of land for $1.35 an acre and started the Fellsmere Farms Company to drain the St. Johns Marsh in 1911 and send water into the
Indian River Lagoon, promoting the engineered canals and other structures as wondrously efficient in providing land to build a massive metropolis. Some progress was made initially, including the establishment of the town of
Fellsmere in which land was sold for $100 an acre, but sales lagged because of a scandal regarding land sale fraud and faulty draining reports from the Everglades. The company then found itself short of funds due to mismanagement. Torrential rains ruptured the newly constructed levees and dikes and forced the company by 1916 to go into receivership. Fell left Florida for Virginia in 1917.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings used the St. Johns as a backdrop in her books
South Moon Under and
The Yearling, and several short stories. In 1933 she took a boat trip along the St. Johns with a friend. In the upper basin, she remarked on the difficulty of determining direction due to the river's ambiguous flow, and wrote in a chapter titled "Hyacinth Drift" in her memoir
Cross Creek that she had the best luck in watching the way the hyacinths floated. Rawlings wrote, "If I could have, to hold forever, one brief place and time of beauty, I think I might choose the night on that high lonely bank above the St. Johns River." Florida in the 20th century experienced a massive migration into the state. Undeveloped land sold well and draining to reclaim wetlands has often gone unchecked, and often encouraged by government. The St. Johns headwaters decreased in size from to one between 1900 and 1972. Much of the land was reclaimed for urban use, but agricultural needs took their toll as fertilizers and runoff from cattle ranching washed into the St. Johns. Without wetlands to filter the pollutants, the chemicals stayed in the river and flushed into the Atlantic Ocean. Boaters destroyed the floating islands of muck and weeds in the upper basin with dynamite, causing the lakes to drain completely. near
Palatka What could have been the most serious human impact on nature in central Florida was the
Cross Florida Barge Canal, an attempt to connect the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the state by channeling the Ocklawaha River, first authorized in 1933. The canal was intended to be long, wide, and deep. Canal construction was top among the engineering priorities in the state, and by 1964 the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Flood control was the primary impetus behind its construction, though the broader reasoning and feasibility of the project remained unclear. The Army Corps of Engineers was also constructing hundreds of miles of canals in the Everglades at the same time and by the 1960s was being accused of wasting tax money through its unnecessary construction projects. In 1969 the
Environmental Defense Fund filed suit in federal court to stop construction on the canal, citing irreparable harm that would be done to Florida waterways and the Floridan Aquifer, central and north Florida's fresh water source. A separate canal, the
St. Johns-Indian River Barge Canal, was planned to link the river with the
Intracoastal Waterway; the project never broke ground, and was canceled soon after the Cross Florida Barge Canal was suspended.
Restoration and
Indian River Counties When steamboats were superseded by the
railroad, the river lost much of its significance to the state. The influx of immigrants to Florida settled primarily south of Orlando, adversely affecting the natural order of wetlands there. Within the past 50 years, however, urban areas in the northern and central parts of the state have grown considerably. In the upper basin, population increased by 700 percent between 1950 and 2000, and is expected to rise another 1.5 million by 2020.
Nitrates and
phosphorus used as lawn and crop fertilizers wash into the St. Johns. Broken septic systems and seepage from cattle grazing lands create pollution that also finds its way into the river. Storm water washes from street drains directly to the river and its tributaries: in the 1970s, the Econlockhatchee River received of treated wastewater every day. Wetlands were drained and paved, unable to filter pollutants from the water, made worse by the river's own slow discharge. Algal blooms, fish kills, and deformations and lesions on fish occur regularly in the river from Palatka to Jacksonville. Although most of the pollutants in the river are washed from the southern parts of the river, the Jacksonville area produces approximately 36 percent of them found in the lower basin. The State of Florida implemented a program named Surface Water Improvement and Management (SWIM) in 1987 to assist with river cleanups, particularly with
nonpoint source pollution, or chemicals that enter the river by soaking into the ground, as opposed to direct piped dumping. SWIM assists local jurisdictions with purchasing land for wetlands restoration. The St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) is charged by the
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) with restoring the river. The first step in restoration, particularly in the upper basin, is the purchase of public lands bordering the river; ten different reserves and conservation areas have been implemented for such use around the St. Johns headwaters. More than have been purchased along Lake Apopka to restore its wetlands, and the SJRWMD has removed nearly of gizzard shad (
Dorosoma cepedianum), a fish species that stores phosphorus and adds to algae problems. To assist with river cleanup and the associated funds for improving water quality in the St. Johns, Mayor
John Delaney of Jacksonville waged a campaign to get it named as an
American Heritage River, beginning in 1997. The designation by the Environmental Protection Agency is intended to coordinate efforts among federal agencies to improve natural resource and environmental protection, economic revitalization, and historic and cultural preservation. The campaign was controversial as the Republican mayor defended asking for federal government assistance, writing "Other rivers have relied heavily on federal help for massive environmental clean-ups. It's the St. Johns' turn now." Twenty-two towns along the St. Johns and environmental, sporting, recreation, boating, and educational organizations also supported its designation, but several prominent Republican politicians expressed concerns over increased federal regulations and restrictions on private property ownership along the river; the
Florida House of Representatives passed a resolution asking President
Bill Clinton not to include the St. Johns. Despite this, Clinton designated the St. Johns as one of only 14 American Heritage Rivers out of 126 nominated in 1998 for its ecological, historic, economic and cultural significance. The continuing increase of population in Florida has caused urban planners to forecast that the
Floridan Aquifer will no longer be able to sustain the people living in north Florida. By 2020, 7 million people are predicted to live in the St. Johns basins, double the number living there in 2008. Proposals to use a day from the St. Johns, and another from the Ocklawaha River, for fresh water are controversial, prompting a private organization named St. Johns Riverkeeper to nominate it to the list of the Ten Most Endangered Rivers by an environmental watchdog group named
American Rivers. In 2008, it was listed as #6, which was met with approval from Jacksonville's newspaper,
The Florida Times-Union, and skepticism from the SJRWMD. The St. Johns River is under consideration as an additional water source to meet growing public water needs. In 2008, the river's Water Management District undertook a Water Supply Impact Study of the proposed water withdrawals and asked the National Research Council to review science aspects of the study as it progressed. This resulted in a series of four reports that assessed the impact of water withdrawal on river level and flow, reviewed potential impacts on wetland ecosystems, and presented overall perspectives on the Water Management District study. The National Research Council found that, overall, the District performed a competent job in relating predicted environmental responses, including their magnitude and general degree of uncertainty, to the proposed range of water withdrawals. However, the report noted that the District's final report should acknowledge such critical issues as include future sea-level rises, population growth, and urban development. Although the District predicted that changes in water management would increase water levels and flows that exceed the proposed surface water withdrawals, these predictions have high uncertainties. The report also noted concerns about the District's conclusion that the water withdrawals will have few deleterious ecological effects. This conclusion was based on the model findings that increased flows from upper basin projects and from changes in land use (increases in impervious areas) largely compensated for the impacts of water withdrawals on water flows and levels. Although the upper basin projects are positive insofar as they will return land to the basin (and water to the river), the same cannot be said about increased
urban runoff, the poor quality of which is well known. == See also ==