It's been well known to early explorers for many years and it has younger counterparts on both east and west coast systems in Florida. You have to think of the Lake Wales Ridge as a sort of necklace or chain of islands running up the system, where you can go and experience it, rather than one, easy identifiable large area. With help from its environmental studies program, we're produced at the Whitaker Center at Florida Gulf Coast University and funded by the Southwest Florida Council for Environment Education. I'm Kevin Pierce with the Florida Environment. History in Florida is a highly relative term.
Most cities date back decades, European settlement goes back only hundreds of years.
At that time, the Atlantic Ocean would have been a couple of miles to your east, the gulf coast would have been two or three miles to your west, and to your south you would have looked straight out to the ocean. And you would have been standing on giant, windblown sand dunes. Some of the ridge and its quirky animals still exist. It's not a State park and it's not a botanical garden. Our role is that we conduct ecological research to understand how this system works.