newnan man
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- Location
- Beautiful Florida
- Primary Interest:
- Relic Hunting
Good story and every "airboater" I've ever met was a little bit crazy!
I'm not particularly fond of the weather, lightning and monsters that live in Florida. We have an occasional copperhead here (haven't actually seen one in 30 year), and black widow spiders and bees. No gators, no moccasins, no fire ants, no killer bees (especially the ones from Saturday Night Live), no boas, rattlers only in the wilds, basically fewer smokeythecat chompers.
Fresh water means Gator , leaches , flesh eating bacteria, Amebas
Here are some gator shots from our adventures. A couple weeks ago while exploring the St Johns River, near Lake Jessup we came across the grand daddy of them all. Fricken thing was HUGE! Had to be a 14 footer, 2’ + girth. Tried to get in close to get a good pix and he shot off a 4 foot bank, and hit the water coming straight at us. Scary moment. View attachment 1930400View attachment 1930401View attachment 1930402View attachment 1930403View attachment 1930404View attachment 1930405View attachment 1930406
The culverts were at the walls of the dikes, stood up on end, looked like some sort of drain system. That’s why I think they might have been large ponds. I have chirp sonar and found no evidence of piers, pilings or dock but the one has a loop canal dug right to it off the river. One old topo I have showed a building at the corner of the dikes but I didn’t find any ruins. Here is an old map of the Steamboat Ports……..nothing to the South of Silver RiverFlipper those are cool shots. Not sure what they might have been. Might have been a still site. Little too far north to be something connected to the phosphate mining that occurred near the Withlacoochee area south and west of there. May have been related to moving timber out too(but looks too small and positioned wrong to the river)). Cool find! Was that a privy made out of a culvert?
The culverts were at the walls of the dikes, stood up on end, looked like some sort of drain system. That’s why I think they might have been large ponds. I have chirp sonar and found no evidence of piers, pilings or dock but the one has a loop canal dug right to it off the river. One old topo I have showed a building at the corner of the dikes but I didn’t find any ruins. Here is an old map of the Steamboat Ports……..nothing to the South of Silver RiverView attachment 1930642
Very possible, good theory. Ask around, Let me know if you come up with anything else. Thanks!I'm thinking staging area for timber. They couldn't collect a raft in the river because it's fairly narrow. The canals give a way to get them to the river from the staging area maybe. There's an old saw mill in an adjacent property here that had small dug canals from the woods around me to where the mill was. Easier to float logs than drag them thru the woods.
Didn’t see a RR berm.Did you happen to cross the old RR berm on your way to those places? There was a Railroad that ran from Silver Springs roughly parallel to the river over to Palatka that was used for transporting timber. It was the Oklawaha Valley Railroad, formerly known as the Ocala Northern Railroad. Some signs of that still exist.
Some old photos of log rafts from earlier times: