This past week, I was invited by the City of Port St Luice for their “St Lucie County and City of Port St Lucie IRL South Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and McCarty Ranch Tour.”
As McCarty Ranch was presented by video, I couldn’t help but grin as I watched ACOE Lt Col Jennifer Reynolds. It appeared we were watching a project featured by the Army Corp of Engineers itself.
“Maybe the Army Corp has met its competition, ” I thought.
City of Port St Lucie, Mayor Greg Oravec praised his city’s Water Quality Warriors, “Our City is doing projects on scale with the Central Everglades Restoration Plan, CERP.”
I find this inspirational and amazing.
The tour showcased the good that we can do ourselves. With the leadership of charismatic visionaries like Mayor Oravec, local governments can get started today!
Lt Col. Reynold’s response? “You don’t have to do everything. You just have to do what you can do.” 🙂
Kudos, Port St Lucie and St Lucie County! You are setting an example for all!
Here a portion of Ten Mile Creek is presently blocked by fill. It will be opened and restored. Many unique fish species use these upper areas of the North Fork and Dr Grant Gilmore studies this area closely.Ten Mile Creek stopped up by fillBlue shirt, Mike Middlebrook Natural Resources Manager explains the reconnection.
Topographical 1823 U.S. Army map, courtesy of Todd Thurlow.Map in transition/overlay showing today’s  I-95 and Turnpike in yellow. (Todd Thurlow)
Link to short video journey showing the former swamp “Alpatiokee” juxtaposed to today’s agriculture and development– Post St Lucie and western Martin County,
The first map in the video is a 1823 U.S. Army Map showing “Al-pa-ti-o-kee Swamp,” as it was known. The second is a 1846 map by Bruff. We then fly in to view Green Ridge, and the ridge just east of Indiantown. Next, we then overlay the 1983 Topo maps to view Green Ridge again, fly up, and around, Ten-mile Creek, and then back down the North Fork of the St. Lucie River. —-Todd Thurlow
Not only was the city of Port St Lucie a swamp, but western Martin County was too. Please view the above video and “see” for yourself! It must have been a fabulous place, now long gone, know as “Alpatiokee,” or “Halpatiokee Swamp.”
Meaning “alligator waters” by the Seminoles, these lands/waterways were traversed for centuries in hand-made canoes. The native people and the Seminoles traveled many miles through the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon, and during rainy season they could travel all the way up into the St Johns River. How? Because these lands, when flooded, were “connected.” Now they are not only no longer connected but water that flowed north into the St John’s flows south into the St Lucie River….
Back to Port St Lucie…..
Recently, I kept noticing that the 1856 “Everglades” Military Map I like so much showed an expansive swamp close to where Port St Lucie and western Martin County are located today.
“This is weird,” I thought. Â “What happened to the old swamp?”
So, I contacted my brother, Todd, who loves maps and can combine them together with technology. (See link/video above.)
Below you’ll find an edited version of Todd’s notes to me.
I find all of this absolutely fascinating, and sometimes a bit unsettling….The natural ridges in the land we seem to ignore; how we blew canals through them; how the water USED to flow; how humans have developed and built agricultural empires, and changed everything….Maybe one day with visual tools like these, future land planners, and water district employees can change back some of our landscape to it’s former glory, and maybe even return a few gators to the landscape, since it’s named after them.
That would be nice, something more to look at while driving the Turnpike than “concrete.” 🙂
Halpatiokee or Alpatiokee translates as  “alligator water” in the Seminole language. (Public photo.)
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TODD’S NOTES REGARDING VIDEO:
THE OLD MAPS:Â The old maps are not necessarily accurate, but they give an idea… They show basically what was known as the “Hal-pa-ti-o-kee Swamp.” Â On some other maps it is labeled the “Al-pa-ti-o-kee Swamp.” On almost all old maps, it would cover the area that is labeled Allapattah Flats on the modern topographical maps — but Hal-pa-ti-o-kee was probably more to the east.
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Google Earth image 2015, Todd Thurlow.
TOPOGRAPHY AND RIDGES:Â There are two distinct ridges in western Martin County. Green Ridge is about 4.6 miles west of the turnpike, (12.5 miles west of the ocean), and can be seen on aerials. The western edge of Allapattah flats is a ridge where the elevation goes quickly from about 30 fee to 40 feet. This ridge (an obvious ancient ocean shoreline) can be seen running all the way to Cape Canaveral parallel to the coast. This ridge is about 12.5 miles west of the turnpike (20 miles from the ocean). Indiantown sits on the high side of the ridge. This Hal-pa-ti-o-kee Swamp on those old maps would be the we area east of the Indiantown ridge – so it is basically all of western Martin and St. Lucie County.
FORMER WATER FLOW:Â Probably everything east of the Green Ridge flowed east into the St. Lucie. Everything between the two ridges flowed north to the St. Johns watershed and everything West of the Indiantown ridge (not much) flowed west into Lake Okeechobee via the little creeks on the east bank of the
….Somewhere between the St. Johns and the St. Lucie so everything between the two ridges, but north of that point, went north to the St. Johns River. Everything south would have gotten picked up by Ten-mile creek in the extreme North Fork of the St. Lucie River, which actually flowed north-east before turning back south to the St. Lucie.
CONCLUSION: There are academics that would know this stuff for sure and all the proper names. These ridges are like little continental divides, separating water flows into separate directions like the Rocky Mountains. When they busted all these canals through the ridges they changed the direction of all the water flows from mostly north/south to east/west. But that was the goal — get it to sea level as quickly as possible and drain the swamps…
Prior to modern development, the enormous Alpatiokee Swamp connected lower Indian River, St Lucie, and Martin Counties, only remnants remain today.
McCarty Ranch Water Project:https://www.cityofpsl.com/government/departments/utility-systems/mccarty-ranch-water-project
