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Navarre Beach Dunes.
Photo courtesy of VISIT FLORIDA.
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With more than 1000 miles of coastline, Florida has a wonderful diversity of
coastal and maritime environments. The peninsula is bounded by the Atlantic
Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and the zone where land and water meet has been
the most important human ecosystem for thousands of years. Here people gain
access to the reefs, shoals, beaches, bays, lagoons, tidal creeks, marshes,
rivers and uplands, and the vast array of resources they contain. From the
coast ships have access to the interior through inlets and rivers, as well as
to the rest of the world. Along Florida's coast the elements of the Maritime
Heritage Trail are spread out in distinctive patterns. By exploring coastal
environments, it is possible to see how these parts fit together, historically
and in modern times.
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Florida Manatee.
Photo courtesy of VISIT FLORIDA.
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For Florida's first people, the Native American tribes who have lived here
more than 12,000 years, as for more recent European explorers and colonists,
and for us today, the key parts of the coastline are the inlets, bays, estuaries
and mouths of rivers. Here are opportunities for transportation, commerce, security,
shelter, recreation, and settlement. Before the modern highway system, Florida relied
on vessels from dugout canoes to steamships to move people and goods, and to develop
the resources of the interior like timber, minerals, and crops. The access to the
interior provided at inlets and rivers, the only openings along the vast stretches
of sandy beach, salt marsh and mangrove, were strategically critical. Forts were
established to protect these points and lighthouses were built to show the way and
warn against hazards. Along the fringing reefs of south Florida, the only coral
reefs in the continental US, hundreds of shipwrecks attest to the dangers of navigation.
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Egret.
Photo courtesy of VISIT FLORIDA.
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The coast has always been and will always be attractive to people. It is a fragile
and dynamic environment, changing constantly with hurricanes, erosion, urban
development, and other natural and human factors. Follow the Maritime Heritage
Trail and explore how people, land, and water are interdependent in Florida.
Watch for patterns of environment and settlement to see how they have changed
over time and think about what they will be like in the future.
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