Mounds, Canals, and History: Ortona Indian Mounds Park
Easy to miss but definitely worth a visit, and a little sad.
I went to Ortona Indian Mounds Park last Saturday, a site I’ve been planning to visit for a long time. Located east of Lake Okeechobee near LaBelle Florida, this little-known spot might be my favorite of all the places I’ve seen since I started researching for Calusa Gold, my upcoming historical fiction novel. It is also kind of sad.
I say Ortona Indian Mounds Park is a bit sad because of its condition. If not for the signs and broken-down boardwalk, one could walk through the area and never have any idea it was significant Calusa and Belle Glade Indian site for many years. My next picture shows the back side of the same mound:
These pictures show both sides of the park. It really is a nice place to visit. On Saturday I only saw two other people, and it was cool in the shade. It is a pretty place. On the other hand, there just isn’t much left of what was a major settlement.
The Park is a few miles north of the Caloosahatchee River, which the Calusas used to travel from Florida’s west coast and Estero Bay to Lake Okeechobee and farther east across the state. They built two canals, the eastern, about two miles long, and western, about 2.3 miles long, which led from the river north to the Ortona Mounds site where they met.
The following map came from The Florida Anthropologist journal. The canals meet on the south side of the Ortona site. The rectangular space in the center is the current Ortona Cemetery.
From my research, I learned that the early Belle Glade people and possibly the Calusas constructed the canals to provide a canoe route around the now nonexistent Lake Flirt, which was often impossible to pass through. There were rapids on the west side when heavy rains caused Lake Okeechobee to flood the area. During dry seasons, the lake often dried up so much that horses could walk across it. The canals provided reliable canoe travel and trade routes around Lake Flirt and may also have connected to the Fish Eating Creek region and Fort Center north and east of Ortona.
Due to modern development and passing years, the canals barely exist, but there is a creek on the west of the cemetery that may have been part of the waterways the Calusas used.
The Ortona site is especially important for my upcoming novel Calusa Gold as I am beginning the book there and then a key scene near the end of the book will take place at the same spot.
An area designated the Large Mound sits across bare field on the east side of the cemetery. Researchers estimate it may have been 25 feet high when inhabited. It is also another example of just how hard it is to recognize any part of the history of the Ortona site.
The Ortona site is not a small, minor historic site. A display at the park states, “Ortona’s canoe canals are the longest man-made prehistoric waterways still existing in eastern North America.” But you could walk through the area and never notice how this was once such an important part of Florida’s history. It’s definitely worth a visit.