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Rules for visitation to a State Archaelogical Site
Vascular plants of the Estero Bay and Barrier Island Environs
Suggested reading for Florida
Prehistory and Calusa Indian Culture
More information on Southwest Florida Archaeology and Calusa Indian Culture
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Framed in forests of mangrove trees, the shell mounds on Mound Key rise more than 30 feet above the waters of Estero Bay. The highest point for miles around, the 125 acre island is almost all an artificial creation, resulting from nearly 2,000 years of human activity. The first Indian inhabitants arrived on Mound Key about A.D.100. At that time, the flat mangrove and oyster-bar island barely rose above the nearby waters. Fish and shellfish provided a plentiful source of food in the shallows around the island, and as the centuries of fishing and shellfish collecting rolled by, discarded shells, bone, and pottery piled up. Mound Key's residents reworked the accumulating shell middens, raising platform mounds, ceremonial mounds and ridges, and carving out canals and large, open watercourts. As time went on, the island grew larger and higher.
 Click here to view a panorama of the Watercourt.
Click here to view a panorama of the view from atop Mound Key.
 Click here to view a slideshow of Mound Key.
 Click here to view a video clip of Mound Key.
Photo courtesy Charles Hester |
By the 16th century, hundreds of mangrove and shell islands throughout southwest Florida were inhabited. The islanders called themselves the Calusa, "the Fierce People."
The sea provided all of the necessities of life for the Calusa, and when Europeans arrived in the early 1500's, the Calusa ruled all of south Florida from an island town known as Calos. Virtually all modern researchers believe that the town of Calos stood on Mound Key. It was there that the Calusa king received the Spanish colonial governor, Pedro Menendez, in 1566, shortly after the founding of our nation's oldest city, Saint Augustine. It was also at Calos in 1567 that the Jesuit priest Juan Rogel manned a short-lived mission, San Antonio de Carlos, in a vain attempt to convert the Calusa to Christianity.
Click here to view a slideshow of Calusa artifacts.
By the 1750's, the Calusa were gone, victims of warfare, slavery, and disease. By the eighteenth century, the island was home to several Cuban fishing families, and toward the end of the 1800's, American pioneers began to settle on the island. While most of the pioneers made their living by fishing and oystering, some of the settlers were members of the Koreshan Unity, a turn-of-the-century communal society led by Dr. Cyrus Teed. In 1961, with their number dwindling, the last Koreshans donated their Mound Key property and their property in nearby Estero to the State of Florida so that a historical and archaeological park could be established.
View from Mound One, highest elevation in southwest Florida. Photo courtesy Calusa Coast Outfitters |
STATUS: An internationally significant archaeological site, Mound Key is accessible only by boat, from the south end of Estero Island. For more information on Mound Key, contact the Koreshan State Historic Site at (239) 992-0311.
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