Tag Archives: cypress

Killing the Heart of Barley Barber Swamp


Photographed on eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee, Florida. May 1917. https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/49347

Every time I post, I learn something.  After reading “The Once Great Forests of Indiantown,” Stuart’s multi-generational resident, and dear friend of my mother, wrote:

“Jacqui, about 1968-9 my 4 hunting buddies and I went hunting in Indiantown in the Barley Swamp, there were huge cypress trees laying over?? Also walking through woods we came up on a mountain,”large Indian mound.” I have never found anyone who knew about the mound. Mid 70s I built a house that all the interior was don w/cypress from Barley Swamp, a sawmill north of Okeechobee cut it. Years later I was talking to a man I built for and he said his brother worked for FPL digging the dike, when digging, he found a carved stone face about 3x2x10 that “I thought looked like images found in Mexico and south,” I guess FPL might have dug up that mound…”

Photographed in a jungle at the southeast corner of Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Spring 1929.https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/50408.

I’d like to thank Boo for his comment questioning why there were gigantic felled cypress trees in Barley Barber Swamp as late as 1968/69.  I had written in my blog that according to a 1930 Stuart News article, most of the cypress and pine trees five miles NW of Indiantown were timbered from 1920 through the later years of the 1930s.

Well, my brother Todd and I went back and tried to deduce a theory. The theory is that the timber companies, as reported in the July, 19, 1930 Stuart News article, had cut most of the trees “five miles west of Indiantown,” but no matter how they tried, their trams and tracks and axes and saws could not reach the deep interior of the swamp. Its heart! So some of the largest trees, as Boo, notes, were felled later, leading up to Florida Power and Lights digging, construction and diking of its Indiantown cooling reservoir.

For perspective, Todd shades below the visible dark river shape of Barley Barber Swamp over a 1940s Department of Agriculture aerial. The shaded area is 3078 acres or 4.81 square miles.

Below, in these Florida Department of Transportation aerials from 1971, at a lower altitude, we can clearly see the Barley Barber Swamp and encroaching agricultural lands that have already been cleared and de-stumped.

The remaining and distinctive thimble shape of Barley Barber Swamp remains today as seen in the 1971/Google Earth 2023 comparison. This would have been just two or three years after Boo Lowrey and his hunting buddy visited the area in 1968/69 and witnessed the giant cypress trees lying on their sides.

Todd also created a remarkable slider for comparison.  

By 1974, the remaining cypress forest of the once great Barley Barber Swamp was being burned, smoke rising to Heaven, to make way for the reservoir as can be viewed and compared in the slides below.

Heartbreaking. But as I am often told such is “progress.” I disagree.

And the Indian Mound? Of course it was right were the FPL reservoir was today. Boo saw it before most of it was drowned. It is no reach to make this deduction as  Big Mound City is known worldwide as “the largest prehistoric Native American earthwork in southeastern Florida.” It was huge and lies a few miles south from Indiantown, not far from the lake, in J.W. Corbett Wildlife Area. These were ancient “cities” along Lake Okeechobee. In fact, when Indiantown was named “Annie” in 1915, long after the native people were gone, the year the St. Lucie Canal was started, there was actually an Everglades Drainage District survey documenting the road from Annie to Big Mound City. Indiantown to Big Mound City? Not far at all.

Flight over Big Mound City just south of Indiantown

I hope this sheds light on the history of the heart of the “once great forests of Indiantown,” and unfortunately, how they were killed.

BarleyBarberGLOPlats c. 1855 underlay juxtaposed to 2023. created by Todd Thurlow website eyeonlakeo.com

*Thank you to Boo Lowrey and Todd Thurlow who made this post possible!

5-3-21

From FPL’s website. I came across this after I wrote my blog post and  felt I should share.

Also a great image showing how the swamp lay right in the middle today’s FPL cooling pond-from Wikipedia’s article on Barley Barber Swamp.

Barley Barber Swamp/FPL -via Dept. of Interior as stated in Wiki.

Loxahatchee Flora and Fauna, River Scenes; Wild and Scenic Rivers, Fred van Vonno

Giant cypress trees, Wild and Scenic River Studies, courtesy archives Fred van Vonno

Loxahatchee Lesson 1

Loxahatchee Lesson 2

Loxahatchee Lesson 3

Loxahatchee Lesson 4

Loxahatchee Lesson 5 

The purpose of this post is to continue to share the slides of the late Fred van Vonno.  I presented charts and aerials yesterday in Loxahatchee Lesson 4. Tomorrow, or later today, I will add structures and people. Today we share my favorite, Loxahatchee Flora and Fauna as well as River Scenes. If you recognize anything interesting let us know! My mother noticed what appears to be old world climbing fern slide #7. A terrible invasive plant that costs millions of dollars for the State of Florida to manage. 

Thank you to my mother for archiving these photos that were once slides in Mr van Vonno’s 1980s slide shows. Thank you to our friend, Nicki van Vonno for sharing her husband’s work. 

SLIDES RELATING TO THE LOXAHATCHEE RIVER

Removed from a slide carousel used by Fred van Vonno who was a Planner (GS-11) from June 1978 until 1982 for the Department of Interior National Park Service, Regional Office in Atlanta, Ga. His work involved assessing the “recreational potential of rivers and trails.” The slides were used for presentations when van Vanno was the Study Coordinator for the Loxahatchee and Myakka Wild and Scenic River studies. It is a good idea to make sure these photographs are documented because some of the photos are more than 40 years old. I would think they would have been taken around 1980. 

Sandra Thurlow 8-20

FLORA & FAUNA

RIVER SCENES

 

Port Mayaca’s Beautiful Gem, The Cypress Lodge, SLR/IRL

cypress-lodge
Historic Postcard courtesy of historian Sandra Henderson Thurlow.

cypress-lodge-back
Back of post card

If one drives to end of Kanner Highway adjacent to the C-44 Canal connecting the St Lucie River to Lake Okeechobee, there is a gem to see. A place that will take you back to an earlier time. The name of this place is the “Cypress Lodge,” in Port Mayaca.

According the “History of Martin County,” this beautiful lodge first opened its doors in 1938 and is *now operated by Mr and Mrs Charles Dorrell functioning as a resting stop for tired motorist crossing the state from north to south, or east to west.”

Page 253 reads: “The lodge, boasting an outstanding cellar, is colonial in design, built  originally as a tavern, has been operating ever since. The two-story all cypress building with a large dining room, is staffed mostly by residents of Pahokee, Canal Point, and surrounding towns. It is said more people work in Port Mayaca than live there.”

Just last week I learned that friend, and long time Stuart resident, Elsie Jean Stewart, has deep ties to the property as her parents were married there. She recently shared with me a wonderful family photo of the young couple. Their tremendous smiles in black in white were full of color. What days these must have been…

I recently drove out past the lodge on my way to Belle Glade while daydreaming what the area was like as in the mid-1800s between Seminole Wars. I saw a giant cypress forest full of wildlife and there was no dike around the lake, so from horseback, I could see over the wide expanse of  Lake Okeechobee….

Those things are gone and the lodge was built later, but it is still connected. I have been curious to see the structure as I have been missing it on my recent drives to Belle Glade. On my last trip, I figured out that at some point the historic Connors’ Highway had been rerouted so now at the Lake, one must turn north rather than south to see the familiar structure.

When I found the lodge, I took some photos to share. Still beautiful. Still timeless. I believe today it is a private residence. Thankfully it is still here and remains a gem of Martin County’s fascinating history around Lake Okeechobee.

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Historic Register: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMAVCV_Cypress_Lodge__Port_Mayaca_FL

icon_maps_st_lucie basin canals
The Cypress Lodge and Port Mayaca are located west near S-308 at Lake Okeechobee. You can see the C-44’s connection from the Lake to the South Fork of the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon. 

2-18-17: Correction!

Today I figured out, thanks to an article by the Luckhardts, that although not mentioned in the “History of Martin County” on page 252-3 , it was Paul M. Hoenshel of Miami who originally built and operated the lodge. Hoenshel is the grandfather of Elsie Jean Stewart whose “parents were married in the lodge” that I mention…. Jacqui

History Cypress Lodge by Alice and Greg Luckhardt: http://www.tcpalm.com/story/specialty-publications/your-news/martin-county/reader-submitted/2017/02/17/historical-vignettes-historic-cypress-lodge-port-mayaca/98056346/