The Nature Preserve Brochure

Basic Information	Timucua Nature Center	Directions to the Preserve
Preserve Ownership	Species Lists	Preserve Map
Preserve Ecosystems	Native History
Florida Birding Trail	Recent History

Welcome to the Pelotes Island Nature Preserve in Jacksonville, Florida. We are a 170-acre island chain with a variety of ecological communities and an equally rich human history. The Preserve curves out into the marshlands north of the St. Johns River and supports a variety of plant and animal life within four main ecosystems. 15,000 school children, scouts, and adult groups benefit from Preserve programs annually.

This Preserve – along with all of its educational benefits – was created due to the vision of E. Dale Joyner, a local lawyer, philanthropist, and scout master who served on the JEA board. His focus and enthusiasm led to the development of these properties as an outstanding educational resource for communities across Florida and South Georgia.

ONLY PARTIES WITH RESERVATIONS MAY ENTER! (Click here for Reservation Information.) Preserve programs include student field-trips to the Preserve, as well as scout days, teacher workshop, and family visit days. The Preserve’s outreach programs include special events like Earth Day, MOSH'S Water Day, Teacher Appreciation events, and more. Our website outreach also connects with about 250 people each day. Be sure to check out the free activities, coloring sheets, fact sheets, and more on Florida animals and native history. Volunteer opportunities are available. Researchers are welcome to involve the preserve in non-invasive studies. Please contact a preserve naturalist with your proposal.

Phone: (904) 665-8887
Fax: (904) 665-8800
Email: hatftd@jea.com
Address: Pelotes Island Nature Preserve, 11201 New Berlin Rd., Jacksonville, FL 32226

The Preserve lands are owned and operated by the St. Johns River Power Park, a coal-fired generating plant. Originally, the Preserve lands were purchased to serve as a buffer zone for the Power Park. Through E. Dale Joyner’s vision, the site was opened to school field-trips in October 1991, and the Pelotes Island Nature Preserve was created as a free resource for the community. The Power Park itself is co-owned and operated by JEA and FPL, 2 Florida utilities.

The Pelotes Island Nature Preserve is proud to be a charter member of the Florida Birding Trail. Birding groups can make advance reservations for guided Saturday tours. Alternatively, the model airfield adjacent to our property has agreed to allow birders to explore their site unassisted from 7am-noon daily as long as posted rules are obeyed. Click here to go to the Preserve’s animal species list. To learn more about the Great Florida Birding Trail, visit their website at http://www.floridabirdingtrail.com. See the main menu above for directions to the Preserve.

The Timucua Nature Center provides climate-control, handicap accessibility, water fountains, and restrooms. Next to the Center’s picnic area, visitors can study marine mammal skeletons, a 40-foot nature mural, butterfly gardens, and a 1920’s cemetery site. (Click here to see the Timucua Site.)

The Coffee Mound Trail offers ½ mile and 1.2 mile options. Along this natural-surface trail, watch for ancient signs of Native Americans and modern signs of Florida wildlife while hiking through all 4 Preserve habitats.

The Lybeck Trail’s ½ mile loop leads visitors down the shell-paved Main Street of a 1920’s town, Lybeck’s Landing, to see old town photos and the remains of historic buildings and the old dock. Hike across ancient shell middens and learn about the Preserve’s rich native history while winding through this shady oak hammock.

The Osprey Trail offers ½ mile of handicap accessible hard-top trail which begins at the Timucua Nature Center and winds around a historic burial site, across native shell middens, and through rich maritime hammock forest. Watch for animal tracks as you approach an elevated deck with a beautiful view of the surrounding salt marsh. Click here to see the Osprey Trail.

The Preserve begins as a PINE FLATWOOD, which also includes species like maple, cypress, willow, and wax myrtle. Along the entrance road, visitors can see and learn about many of the plants that Florida's Native Americans depended on for health and survival. Maples provided sugars and candies, while cypress offered raw materials for canoe-building. Willow was used as a pain-killer by virtue of the naturally occurring aspirin in its bark. Even the scrubby wax myrtle was valued for its insect-repellent properties. (Click here to see the Pine Flatwoods).

The edges of the SALT MARSH foster salt-tolerant species, like sabal palm and yaupon holly. Cordgrass and needlerush thrive in the deeper brackish waters. Although humans can not eat these grasses, many forms of edible marine life utilize the grasses as a food source and as a protected nursery area for their young. (These grasses also serve to anchor the mud flats against serious erosion.) Larger animals, including herons, egrets, woodstorks, and ospreys, use the salt marsh as a breeding ground and fishing spot. In exchange for this easy access to food and den sites, salt marsh organisms must be able to tolerate extremes of salinity, temperature, and dehydration. (Click here to see the Salt Marsh.)

Crossing the bridge onto Pelotes Island transports the visitor from the relatively open pine flatwoods and salt marsh to the lush multi-canopy environment of the MARITIME HAMMOCK. These upland areas near salt water provide homes for gopher tortoises, raccoons, bobcats, and many other species. The hammock is composed of four layers of vegetation. The highest canopy is made up mainly of oaks, hickories, palms, magnolias, and cedars. Below this, visitors will see bays, huckleberries, hollies, and plums. At about 3 feet from the ground, coral bean, saw palmettos, and saltbrush are dominant. The ground itself supports wildflowers, rare orchids, and mushrooms. Linking all four levels are a variety of vines which grow from ground to canopy, including muscadine grape, greenbriar, wild bean, poison ivy, and cross vines. (Click here to see the Maritime Hammock.)

The last Pelotes Island ecosystem is actually a microhabitat, called a SHELL MIDDEN. Prehistoric Native Americans left huge middens (trash piles) as evidence of their occupation. These middens, made mostly of oyster shells and bits of broken pottery, are now overgrown with vegetation from the surrounding hammock. However, the oyster shells mark the middens as a unique microhabitat. By adding calcium to the soil and warming the ground by absorbing the sun's heat, these shells allow tropical species, like wild coffee, to thrive in sub-tropical north Florida. (Click here to see the Shell Middens.)

During the last 100 years, the Preserve lands have been used for a variety of human purposes - from cattle grazing to turpentine harvesting. Today, the Pelotes Island Nature Preserve provides a safe haven for local animals and plants, an oasis within today’s construction-oriented society.

WHERE DOES THE NAME "PELOTES" COME FROM? Pelotes Island has changed hands many times. Spanish land grant records indicate that James Pelot cultivated the island from 1795 to 1806. Then Pelot moved to Amelia Island, leaving the land vacant until February 1816 when it was given to Josiah Gray as a service grant by the Spanish Governor, Coppinger. It has also been suggested that Pelot traded Pelotes Island to Josiah Gray for a parcel on Amelia Island. Gray sold Pelotes Island to George Flemming in March 1819, who in turn, sold it to John Brown in November of 1820.

Local legend suggests that while Josiah Gray was traveling, John Brown commissioned a man named Gonzales to kill Gray’s wife. Her death may have been part of the reason Gray sold the island, enabling John Brown to acquire it. The legend goes on to say that Gray discovered this betrayal and returned later to kill Brown. After this, Gray remained on Pelotes Island for some time, searching for the gold and treasure Brown had reportedly pirated and buried on Pelotes Island. Gray never found the treasure. He eventually left Pelotes Island to farm an area near Cedar Point Road.

No evidence remains of the Gray or Brown residences on Pelotes Island. However, Herb Sands, a resident of the last 2 islands in the Pelotes Island chain from the early 1950’s until his death in the early 1990’s, recalls that partial walls of an old tabby house were still visible in the 1950’s. The structure was located between Lybeck’s Landing and Dent Mound. (These two sites are approximately 400 yards apart. See Map.) The new Timucua Nature Center is located about 250 yards from each.) The tabby house was apparently destroyed by trespassers in the 1960’s.

Herb Sands also remembers seeing a grave stone marked "Jonathon Brown" with dates, across the road from Dent Mound. In 1988, all that remained was a plain marble slab with a number of grave-sized excavations around it. Mr. Sands remembers that the site was vandalized and saw bones sitting on the surface. Olin Williams, another area resident, recalls seeing a skull near the gravesite during the 1950’s. Legend has it that the late J. B. Mallard collected the remaining bones and tombstone and took them to Midway,

Georgia

for safekeeping.

During construction of the Timucua Nature Center in 1999, archaeologists discovered at least ten gravesites in the proposed septic system location. Construction stopped immediately, and police and archaeologists were notified. These professionals determined that individuals buried there were Caucasian and had been buried more than 70 years ago. These gravesites may be the ones reported by Sands and Williams as repeatedly vandalized.

Archaeologists also discovered a spent bullet with the remains. Could this be the John Brown of the legend? Several buttons, a suspender clip, and other items were discovered as well, dating these remains to at least 70 years ago. The date suggests that this might have been the cemetery for Lybecks Landing, a 1920’s fishing village on Pelotes Island. Perhaps earlier residents like John Brown, were the first to be interred here. Today, the Lybeck cemetery is fenced, with an engraved marble marker, and a memorial butterfly garden.

The Timucua Nature Center’s septic system was re-designed so that installation would not impact the cemetery. If you have any information regarding historical residents of Pelotes Island which might be interred at this site, please contact us at 665-8856. Thank you.

WHAT WAS LYBECK’S LANDING? In 1920, Pelotes Island was the site for a thriving entrepreneurial fishing town called Lybeck’s Landing. Nels August Lybeck designed a floating factory ship called an Ocean Harvester. He sold stock in the New York stock exchange, held seminars in Jacksonville to recruit interest in his project, ran ads in Florida papers, and convinced a towns’ worth of people to move out to Pelotes Island and complete his dream of the Ocean Harvester. At that time, there was no road connecting Pelotes Island with the mainland. The only way on or off was on the Avalon Ferry. The Ocean Harvester prototype ship was equipped with a 50-foot net which would be hauled out of the water with a crane. Unfortunately, the net assembly moved too slowly to catch fish economically. (Click here to see postcard photos of the town of Lybeck.)

The town of Lybeck, which had its own post office, general store, hotel, ice house, and saw mill, folded shortly after Lybeck’s untimely death in 1921. Only the shell-paved main street, a few foundation blocks, and the remnants of the old dock are still here to mark the site of the old town. The shells which paved their Main Street were mined by Lybeck’s inhabitants from the nearby native shell middens. The three cedar trees in the attached photo are still alive and well (Click here). They allow visitors to find the exact positions of these long forgotten buildings.

From the 1930’s to the 1950’s, livestock, including cows, hogs, and goats, roamed Pelotes Island. The Bonnell family cut timber and mined the shell middens on Pelotes for use as off-site fill material.

WHAT IS PINDER’S ISLAND? Pinder’s Island, located east of Pelotes Island, was owned in 1945 by the Pinder family. (Click here to see pictures of the Pinder Family and Home.) Mr. Pinder moved away after his wife’s death in 1965. Although the property changed hands several times, it was never again used for residential purposes. Their house and barn, now in poor condition, were used over the years for a variety of activities, including bootlegging, cock-fighting, dog-fighting, drug dealing, whisky distilling, and high-stakes card gambling. Today Pinder’s Island, with its large midden sites, is a protected part of Preserve grounds. The Pinder’s Island eagle nest can be viewed without disturbing the young, from approximately ¾ of a mile away on Pelotes Island. (Click here to see the eagle’s nest.)

WHAT ARE THE SANDS’ ISLANDS? Sands’ Islands are the last two islands in the Pelotes Island chain, and are not owned by the Preserve. They were purchased by Herb Sands from the Bonnell family in 1951. He built a one room house for him and his wife Thelma, where they lived for five years until he completed their 1,800 square foot block house in 1965. Mr. and Mrs. Sands passed away during the 1990’s. Their son, Herb Sands, Jr., owns both islands.

Today, the island chain (except for the Sands islands) is owned by the St. Johns River Power Park. The entire area is set aside as a free educational facility for the students of Northern Florida and Southern Georgia.

Prehistoric hunters and gatherers lived on Pelotes Island at least 4,000 years ago. These people were ancestors of the Timucua Indians who inhabited the Island from about 500 BC to the 1,600's. The Timucua may have visited Pelotes Island in the winter in small family groups or lived on the island chain year-round. The Timucua were a water-based culture and depended heavily on the salt marsh for fish and shellfish. They also hunted and foraged for land animals and plants, perhaps supplementing their diet with hard-wrought corn and beans grown in NE Florida’s poor, sandy soils. Beginning in the 1,500's, French, Spanish, and British explorers introduced the disease and warfare that eventually destroyed the Timucua’s thriving civilization. (Click here to go to the Timucua section of the website.)

NOTE: The Native Americans who lived in NE Florida and SE Georgia all shared a common language. Today, we call these people "Timucua speakers." They did NOT call themselves by this name, so there is NO "correct Timucua way" to say it. They may have used the word "Thimogona" to refer to enemy chiefs. Europeans mistakenly adopted the names "Thimogona," "Timogoa," and "Timucua" to describe everyone in this language group. The Spanish pronunciation for Timucua is "Tee-MOO-kwa."