250 Years Later Bartram’s Travels Continue to Inspire Conservation
by Jeffrey Forbes
April 2024 marks the 250th anniversary of William Bartram’s travels to and through beautiful North Central Florida in 1774. Bartram, a Quaker, naturalist, botanist and explorer from Philadelphia visited Florida on a commission from physician, Dr. John Fothergill of London, England who financed the young man’s excursions. Fothergill and others paid Bartram to collect and catalogue strange and rare foreign plants for inclusion in their large and beautiful estate gardens. An aspiring artist honing his skill, Bartram drew and recorded all that he saw around him.
Bartram actually made an earlier trip to Florida with his father John, botanist to the King of England, in 1765. This earlier adventure was made to give the world its first detailed accounting of the St. Johns River, with descriptions of its climate, geography, plants and animals. The father and son team stuck to the river’s immediate environs, but the younger Bartram became intrigued with stories of the interior lands he heard at John Spalding’s two riverside trading posts. Florida frontiersman spoke of a great level savannah fifty miles to the west where the waters disappeared into holes in the earth.
Bartram’s map of Alachua Savannah, known today as Paynes Prairie.
Returning to Florida, Bartram made his way back to Spalding’s stores and fell in with a trading party setting out for the Alachua region. A trader by the name of Job Wiggens accompanied the excited adventurer. Travelling west, the party bedded down for the night at present day Cowpen Lake. Still heading westward, the band traversed forests and marshes. In his recounting of the entire trip, commonly known as Travels (1791), Bartram details the many gopher tortoises and their “great dens” encountered as they crossed the sandy hills east of Alachua. And then, “continuing eight or nine miles through this sublime forest, we entered on an open forest of lofty pines and oaks, on gently swelling sand hills, and presently saw the lake (Cuscowilla), its waters sparkling through the open groves.”
Photo: Tuscawilla Preserve by Kim Davidson.
Arriving at Cuscowilla, present day Tuscawilla Preserve, Bartram made note of the 800-year-old Cameron Indian Mound, the remnants of which can still be seen in the Town of Micanopy’s Native American Heritage Park. Shortly after, he and company were welcomed into the Seminole village of Cuscowilla and presented to chief Ahaya-“The Cowkeeper” who was necessarily interested in their business and purpose. When it was explained that Bartram was collecting plant specimens, the Seminole headman saluted the naturalist with the name Puc Puggy or flower hunter and Bartram was given permission and protection to travel over the region on his errand. From Cuscowilla Bartram and friends travelled to the Great Alachua Savanna, today’s Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, where he was overwhelmed with its beauty and grandeur.
In his Travels William Bartram gave us the first written record of the Alachua region: its flora, its fauna, its topography and its people. The mission of the Alachua Conservation Trust is to protect the natural, historic, scenic and recreational resources in and around North Central Florida. ACT is proud that at least two of our preserves are documented Bartram visitation sites, Little Orange Creek and Tuscawilla. The lofty, virgin longleaf pine forest may be gone and the land may be fragmented by asphalt covered roadways, but if we are fulfilling our mission, we’d like to think that Wiggens or Ahaya or Bartram could be dropped onto one of these preserves today and still recognize them as places they knew and loved.
Banner image: Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park by Kim Davidson
