A Florida Friday: Coquina ‘flashback’

January 1966 visit to St. Augustine’s Castillo de San Marcos (that’s little moi in the white glasses with mom & big sis)

Below are some shells seen and collected during a recent outing to Sanibel Island… among them, the tiny, colorful coquina. Millions line the shore, and at low tide, you can watch them jiggle and maneuver as they wait, and hope, for the tides to shift back in their favor.

Coquina shells

Whenever I see coquina shells, St. Augustine always comes to mind. If you’ve been to that beautiful, historic city on Florida’s NE coast, you know that the Spanish quarried coquina rock (a limestone composed of sand and mollusk shells found in NE Florida) to build their Castillo de San Marcos (known for some time as Fort Marion) from 1672 to 1695.

I first saw the fortress at age 5, and it, and the coquina rock, made a huge impression on me. The old ‘downtown’ as well, of course, which was supplemented by Henry Flagler’s amazing architectural creations in the 1880s. What kid would not be awestruck by all that?! And, goodness, let’s not forget Ponce de Leon’s ‘Fountain of Youth‘ up the street from the fort. (I think I am way more interested in that fountain now than I was even back then!!! 😉 )

Of course, I’m not alone—for generations, St. Augustine has been casting a spell on travelers. I found one visitor’s account from 1890 (below; scroll down); much of what they wrote about then could easily be experienced today.

Well, have a good weekend all; we’ve ‘cooled down’ here to a chilly 82! I think we’ll go fishing.

St. Augustine, Florida, 1898

Fort Marion, St. Augustine and harbor, Detroit Publishing Company, 1898 (Library of Congress image LCCN2008678231 – No known restrictions on publication)

A visitor’s perspective – Duluth Evening Herald, Saturday, March 15, 1890
(courtesy of http://www.fultonhistory.com)

A Florida Friday: 1960s Sanibel Island brochure for ‘Casa Ybel’

Quite a while ago, I did a post featuring Sanibel Island, a place we enjoyed on family vacations in the 1960s. I recently came upon this brochure for Casa Ybel, which is where we used to stay. The resort still exists after all these years, but, as you can imagine, it is much-much different! For their website, click here. To be honest, while it looks lovely today, I think I’d rather time travel back to the Casa Ybel of the 1960s; you could really feel like a bit of a castaway back then. The beach was THE place to be! I don’t recall having TV in any of our accommodations, which back then would have meant getting several channels at most—changed manually sans remote, of course. When not on the beach, we were busy exploring the island, reading books, or playing games. 🙂

Image from ‘Florida’ in Davis’ new commercial encyclopedia, the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Published by Ellis A. Davis. Berkeley, Cal. Seattle. 1909 (Credit: Rumsey Collection; http://www.davidrumsey.com)

But we were far from the first to be captivated by this area of Florida. Below is a near-100-year-old article* from the Homer (NY) Republican, dated 21 February 1918, which features a letter describing one person’s impressions of a winter-day boat tour around some of the sights off the coast of Ft. Myers (winter residence of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison): the pristine and exotic-looking (to a Northerner’s eyes) Sanibel, Captiva, and Pine islands.

(Note: The writer erroneously describes the Caloosahatchee River as having been named by the Seminole Indians and meaning ‘beautiful river’. Caloosahatchee refers to the culture of the Calusa Indians who preceded the Seminoles and thrived in SW Florida from 500 BC to 1750 AD!–and were ultimately pushed out (even sold into slavery) by Seminoles and other hostile tribes that had come down into the Florida peninsula from northern areas. Some say the remaining Calusa escaped to Cuba.)

*Credit: http://www.fultonhistory.com

Protected: A Florida Friday: For the love of seashells

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