Ocala National Forest
By Dr. Rob Norman and Gene Gallant
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About this ebook
Dr. Rob Norman
Dr. Rob Norman has written and edited 28 books and has written for 10 years for Discover magazine. Norman and Gene Gallant have spent many years exploring, photographing, and writing about the Ocala National Forest. Photographs for this publication come from the Florida Memory Archives, the Ocala Public Library, the Silver River Museum, and private collections.
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Ocala National Forest - Dr. Rob Norman
book.
INTRODUCTION
And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
To take on a project as big and vast as the Ocala National Forest is monumental. I look at the forest as the stage of an enormous and ever-changing ecological theatre onto which untold numbers of lives have come and gone. My questions include the following: What makes up the stage? How do characters come and go on this stage? How and why has this happened?
Major river arteries, primarily north and south with the Ocklawaha fed by the Silver Springs run and the St. Johns River, have allowed visitors to enter here. Now highway interstates allow major interactions along both margins of the forest and more forays inside the forest. Today the Ocala National Forest—a popular recreation area for canoeing, swimming, camping, hiking, picnicking, and hunting—receives more visitors than any other national forest in the Sunshine State. Millions of visitors annually escape to this forest, which is one of Central Florida’s last remaining traces of forested land.
Ocala National Forest is the oldest national forest east of the Mississippi River and the southernmost in the nation. On November 24, 1908, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt signed the original proclamation establishing the Ocala National Forest, reserving it from public domain lands. The forest has numerous threatened and endangered species, and management is geared to protect and perpetuate these species. The sand pine scrub is the largest in the world. Juniper Springs Recreation Area, dedicated in 1936, has been in continuous use since its dedication.
The following is a partial quote from the proclamation: Do proclaim that there are hereby reserved from settlement or entry and set apart as a public reservation, for the use and benefit of the people, all the tracts of land, in the State of Florida, shown as the Ocala National Forest.
This proclamation in 1908 reserved this land for the use and benefit of the people.
On July 16, 1938, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Ocala National Forest boundary.
What are the origins of the word Ocala? Some say it is a Timucuan-Indian term meaning fair land
or big hammock.
More generally accepted is that Ocala is believed to have come from the name of a Native American chief called Ocali, who was in the area around 1539. The history of the First Peoples settling in the forest is as indefinite as the boundaries of the land.
Imagine being in the forest 10 million years ago during the Pliocene and Miocene eras. You take a walk. With each step forward, you may see giant raccoons and scores of other ungulates or hoofed animals. When you get deeper into the woods, you may think you were walking around today. The cypress, conifers, magnolias, and palms have a similar appearance now, as they did when the giraffe-camels ate freely from the tall branches and giant vegetarian sloths hugged the trees. Above you fly anhingas, grebes, and dragonflies, and you may spot an armadillo that looks like the greatest-grandfather to one of today’s ground sniffers.
You will, however, never spot a dinosaur; the great peninsula of Florida was underwater when they thundered across other lands. During these periods of submersion, mollusks and fish swept in from the sea, leaving a legacy of countless shells and bones when they perished. The calcium content of the marine life was the primary ingredient of the limestone foundation that is millions of years old. The rising and cracking of the limestone crust formed the ridges running down the center of the peninsula. Relic dunes appeared following submersion.
Keep walking—Ocala’s ridges, being slightly higher than the coastal regions, were the first to dry out, which became an island of refuge for semiaquatic creatures and other animals. Even the remnants of beached whales are still discovered. Following the retreat of the glaciers, the vegetation returned. Acidic water crept into the limestone, creating subterranean caves and fissures. Empty spaces were soon filled with rainwater, which helped to erode the rock, and the new woods, made of a collection of sand, twigs, and leaves, took shape and filled in the openings. As the water lowered, new caves were carved as well as curved passages. With the passing of time, the rain pushed bones, fossils, shells, soil, and leaves down into the lower caves, carrying liquid organic acid to dissolve the underlying bedrocks. Sinkholes were formed in the upper caves.
Look around—snowy egrets flaunt their breeding plumage and high-step through the aquatic vegetation, showing off the bright yellow feet that give them the nickname of little golden slippers.
Turkey vultures perch on the top fronds of cabbage watching the neighborhood, and ibis, cormorants, and osprey join storks, herons, and anhingas in the competition for fish. Bass break the water’s surface in search of food. Sandhill cranes fly overhead, deer graze in the shallows, and alligators line the river and lakes like ancient sentinels. Coots, with their unmistakable white bills and plaintive calls, common moorhens, and lesser scaups mingle and feed. You will observe that the forest and surrounding area supports an abundance of wildlife.
In her wonderful book Forest in the Sand, Marjory Bartlett Sanger writes, Every forest has its own story to tell. It tells of the years it has seen and its beginnings and how it has grown old with the earth. It tells of the plants and animals living in it, its sunshine and winds and rains, its seasons and cuttings and dyings and renewals. Like the ocean, the forest is in a state of constant movement, rising and falling, growing and diminishing, never at rest.