What is the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve?
Founded in 1988, the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, following more than 60 years of effort by people wishing to celebrate the European discovery of La Florida. The preserve's original boundaries enclose 47,000 acres, a vast tract of ecosystems managed by federal, state, city and private landholders. Some of the key sites included within the preserve include: a slightly scaled down model exhibit of the French Fort Caroline, a reproduction of a monument to French entrepreneur and colonist Jean Ribault, Kingsley Plantation - one of the most intact examples of the slave plantation system from the 18th-19th centuries, and vast tracts of Florida wetlands and forests with hiking trails. The Preserve is named for the cultures that inhabited the area at the time of French and Spanish arrival, the Timucua.
What is the Temporary Travel Office Doing (Unofficially) There?
The Travel Office has been investigating the potential to develop alternative forms of tourism within the Preserve. There are many stories surrounding the Preserve that are not currently part of the experience offered to Preserve visitors. To these ends, the Travel Office has come up with a multi-part proposal for expanding the Preserve's spatial and narrative boundaries.
Download our current report outlining the research and proposal phase of our not-in-residence consultation. [ 3.4 MB PDF ]
Guanabacoa Trail
Guanabacoa Trail is a proposed elevated path that would extend approximately 800 km from the Observation Platform located on Round Marsh within the Preserve to Guanabacoa, Cuba. The trail memorializes two tragic deaths in the history of Colonial and Post-Colonal Jacksonville Florida: Juan Alonso Cabale, the last known Timucuan, and Johnnie Mae Chappell, an African-American Floridian murdered during the height of the civil rights movement in Florida. more...
Ash Site Annex
To further the mission of the Timucuan Preserve, the Travel Office is recommending an extension of the preserves geographic boundaries to include more recent examples of land use and conflict that reveals the continuing relevance of battles over Florida's land. Simply put, we want to include our contemporary situation in the "6,000 years of human history" that one can "discover" in the Timucuan Preserve. more...
Wilson Armstrong Memorial to the Failed Timucuan Rebellion of 1656
What can a failed 17th Century Timucuan insurrection possibly have in common with a failed mid 20th Century Jacksonville City Council campaign? more...
1964 Climatological and Civil Unrest Learning Center
1964 was a turbulent year for Northeast Florida. Along the coast, efforts to achieve racial equality were being met with extreme violence, a devastating hurricane wrecked havoc, and somehow the Beatles managed to play a concert to a racially integrated audience in a football stadium surrounded by flood waters. more...
Eartha M.M. White Trail to the Acosta Electoral & Ecological Platform
Take a walk through thehistory, present and future of electoral and climate monitoring technologies, while learning something about the personalities and events that helped shape the political and physical landscape around you. more...