If you are looking for a place with clear waters, picnic benches, wild hermit crabs (I thought they only existed for children to inevitably neglect) and to feel like you are in Jurassic Park but before everything went south; Turtle Mound is the place for you. Turtle Mound is a 50ft tall native shell midden on the southern tip of New Smyrna Beach that is made from primarily oyster shells but also contains clam and conch shells as well as pottery pieces and various animal bones (fish, opossum, skunk, rodent, and snake). One of the first mentions of Turtle Mound was in a journal entry by Alvaro Mexica in 1605 in which he states “...and you pass close by the Indian House which is named for Surruque, which is a hillock of oyster shells and low shrubs. Near the foot of this mound the Indians of Surruque launch their canoes to go out to sea”. And if you think that is an old account of it, there was one from about 50 years before in 1564! The French artist, LeMoyne, noted it in his drawings of the area!
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| Views from atop of Turtle Mound. |
There are oh so few places in the United States where you can stand and know that the human-made formation has been there for centuries, but Turtle Mound is one of them. Thanks to radiocarbon dating the oldest parts of Turtle Mound that were tested date all the way back to 200 CE (that’s roughly 1,821 years old!! And yes, I used a calculator for that. I’m in the humanities for a reason). For reference, the Mayan pyramid of Kukulkan Temple, the largest pyramid in Chichen Itza was built around 900 CE and Notre Dame de Paris was not even started until 1163 CE! What is even more special about Turtle Mound is that it is relatively undisturbed. I say “relatively” because while there was some shell mining going on it was saved from total destruction by people like CB Moore. Other shell middens in the area were totally demolished with dynamite but this one only lost some of its height (there are estimations that would put it at 75 feet tall initially). Additionally, there has never been a complete excavation of it besides minimal disruption to build a boardwalk from the bottom to the top so it is very possible that Turtle Mound is even older than archeologists currently believe.
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| Shell midden peaking through the top soil and scrubby plants on the mound. |
The main risk for Turtle Mound is, once again, coastal erosion. Sea level rise has been the main contributor to this but boating wakes are also adding to the problem. To combat the wakes the Canaveral National Seashore (a state park at the tip of New Smyrna Beach) has set up signs for boaters to glow slower to not create those wakes. Preservationists have also planted mangroves all along the edge to strengthen the soil as well as added net bags full of oyster shells to the base in order to reinforce the mound but also to keep its historical integrity.
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| Oyster bags, part of the living shoreline at Turtle Mound, provide habitat for oysters, encouraging protective reefs to grow in front of the mound. |
So, if the mound is being protected and maintained why is it in this series? It is in here because even though there are fantastic teams working to protect the mound if we become passive to these problems then they will continue to get worse and worse until we are past the point of no return. Passivity destroys places like Turtle Mound and any other thing or person we take for granted. We need to protect Turtle Mound and other native mounds because so much of native cultures and the people have been destroyed so these are the few remaining aspects of their ancient cultures. Turtle Mound is a Timucuan mound and due to European contact and conquest, the Timucua is now considered an extinct tribe so how can we allow for the last remains of their people and their culture to also be damaged? Where’s the justice in that?
Words and images by Emily Hulet, FPAN Intern.
