Authors Comments

 
 
 
 
                                                                      Saint Julians River
                                                                      Copyright Bill Gallagher
                                                                      Tampa Florida
                                                                      Deming New Mexico
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
FIRST DRAFT
30,300 words
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                                
 
 
     A lot of this book will seem strange, because a lot of it IS strange, at least seeing it from here.  It is very difficult to put ones self in a time before, and to do it right.  In fact it is probably impossible.  Not only was the land and society different, but the people too, much different from the people today.  What we are is largely due to our environment, a very intricate thing, and different for everyone.  I tried to illustrate both the differences, and the common traits among people, across 2 centuries time in the relatively modern world. It took a lot of thought, and I'm haunted by the fact that it cannot be perfect.
     A lot of this book is true, right out of histories and off maps, because I have delved deeply over the years and have amassed a lot of knowledge.  And there are things I know that no one else knows, specific sites, very odd finds, personal informations from people who are dead now...a lot of this is preservation of my knowledge.  I remember being very impressed as a young boy that people took the time to write books and leave what they knew behind.  That alone is the foundation of all my views.  I see it as a positive growth, humanity, even though foolishness abounds.  I try to do what I think is right.  Wish me luck.  With all that in mind, I found glaring mistakes all the way up to the last proof redding (hee-hee), so I am sure there are more, and I am still relatively unclear about the early military ranking system, especially among enlisted men of that time.  Still reading.
      Some very obscure things I know:
      When I found Fort Frank Brook in Steinhatchee Florida it was with intent, and it was also on that day that I met the landowner, a Mr. Cooey.   I was with a metal detecting partner and we had the old township and range map, a survey from the early 1800s, showing the fort and also the spelling ESTEEN-HATCHEE for the river.  Things like that can be gotten from the Architectural and Cartographic Branch Of The National Archives.   
     Mr. Cooey came up behind us in his truck as we drove, because we were unknowingly on his private land.  We were following signs nailed on trees, trying to get to the river.  Mr. Cooey graciously allowed us access to the fort, which had already been metal detected hard, but many good things were still found.  He is a really nice guy.   
     Everyone saw the boiler that blew up.  As far I know I am the only one that sensed what it was.  To the others it was a dastardly blanket of iron trash masking their metal detectors abilities.  To be fair, that type of thing is the rule versus the exception when metal detecting.  You have to see it to believe it, how much trash lies below our feet, everywhere.  I think about the old world, every city and town a tell.   This exploded boiler tank was small pieces of iron in a halo out to about 30 feet, except where it had been stopped by the fort wall.  It was one of the most violent things I have ever seen evidence of.  The metal was rent into tiny pieces and twisted in very abstract ways.  
     I found an 1837 half dime at that fort and a bud found an 1838 half dime. They were pristine.  I know where many of the latrines were located, the forts boundaries, some outlying encampments and storage sheds, and other things, because I metal detected there extensively for years during the 90s, among the planted pines, and those are some of the fondest memories I have of Florida.  I too fell in love with that place.  One cold morning I was there during an extensive mushroom flush, they were popping out of the pine needles as I metal detected, I have never seen anything like that before or since.  Chanterelle looking things.  My last trip there was late summer 2010 and its become houses.  The guys who first detected Fort Frank Brook found it in the 1970s.  Treasure Shack Paul Powell.
    I published some of the 1990s finds in Western and Eastern Treasures Magazine (https://www.treasurehuntingwithbillgallagher.blogspot.com) in my short series there concerning The Scribe The Archivist and The Wise Man.  I am The Scribe, just sayin'.  I published a lot about my Florida metal detecting finds in that magazine during the 70s 80s and 90s, and Lost Treasure magazine from 2013 to 2018.  For any and all interested, I am Liam the Leatherman, in this story.
     The thing about the fort site there in Esteenhatchee/Steinhatchee is that it was leased by paper company interests over the years and commercial pine had been planted there for a long time.  The machines that harvest and replant this cellulose are gigantic, along the lines of the draglines at the phosphate pits, grown trees look like toothpicks, literally.  Anyway, even though I found general areas of interest, the land itself had been turned deeply several times since at least the 50s.  If you have ever seen new rows for planted pine, you understand that sometimes the machines dig 4 feet deep or more.  There was not a lot of in situ stuff at Fort Frank Brook, if any.   Lots of musketballs and some buttons, broken glass.  Nothing like what was screened from Fort George Mercer Brooke in Tampa by our group over the years.  The city of Tampa would dig up pipes or whatever all over downtown, and pile the trash dirt here there everywhere.  The stuff was chock full of very rare military buttons and early American coinage.  I know.  I found lots of it.  Still do.  Archaeologically speaking, this is the true value of the metal detector, salvage, and there is nothing like them.  The info I got from Fort Frank Brook was all that was preserved, as far as I know.  I did hear of a school group out there once who dug a small refuse pit, but I never saw any reports, and I really do doubt they were able to find anything archaeologically intact.   
     No one paid me.  I did it because I love to do it.  And there are many people like me.  We also clean up a lot of trash, and have the pictures to prove it.
     Rattlesnake Florida was a very early carny town just south of Gandy boulevard on Westshore.  Saint Julian is also a patron saint of Carnival Workers, one more interesting little datum.  The Gadsen point rattlesnake issue was quite a thing during the opening of Macdill AFB, everybody got handguns because of the snakes, and I personally witnessed the bi-yearly rattlesnake migrations across the Gadsen Peninsula, during my years at the Class A Hot Spot P70, Macdill AFB 1978-81.  The largest rattler I ever had the misfortune to see up close and personal was in excess of six feet and really fat, a lethal piece of electricity that could shock you to death with one bite.  Whip tongues.  Mr. No Shoulders.
     All the information about spear points and flint working is true, even the buckets of them found around Thonotosassa.  I once had the very early advertisement for the hotel on the lakes edge at Thonotosassa, inviting people to come and stay and collect buckets of arrowheads along the lake shore.  Someone gave me a box of research stuff, it was in there.
     I am still an avid collector of Florida archaic and paleo spear points and have been since a teenager.  I discovered them in ditches on Macdill AFB during my tour of duty there.   That is one way I know about the port at the end of Gadsen point (Now a golf course and Radar Squadron) and also about Big Spring, which became a garbage dump for the base in the 1970s.  I have visited all those sites many times.  At Big Spring we found beveled Bolen spear points, some of the first examples of the rifling effect.         
    The old Harris Grove paleo/archaic/woodland Native American site was along 301 at Stacy road, the Corp of Engineers went in there in the 1920s and 30s and dug canals for rail.  They went through a nexus camp that was at least ten thousand years old, it was the age-old river access the natives used to get to the famous stone mine.  There were four waterways all together, Lake Thonotosassa, Flint Creek, Saint Julians/Hillsborough river, and a defunct spring complex near Stacy road which ran to the river.  Some of this land became county land and is used for road department stuff now.  Delta Asphalt and Paving along 301 was just south of the above site.  There, high grade construction sand was mined from ice age and archaic dunes for many years, the dunes became deep pits, the earliest paleo hearths were found around 23 feet.  That sand was totally loaded with chert and agate spear points of great age.  I used to follow the dump trucks so I could collect at the dumping sites after rains.
     I have found beautiful spear points in peoples footprints, many times, therefore it is not safe to think that things of this beauty and value would surely be noticed by most people, in fact the very opposite is true.  People seem to be most interested in directing and producing their own reality tv shows, the ones in their minds, and they miss many interesting things.  A shame.
     Except for the official personages, the characters of the book and the survey crew are fabrications.  I used real historic names when I could, especially place names,  like the Fort Brook(e)s, and Gadsen, but I invented the immediate characters.   I tried hard to imagine them as products of their time.   The ways that people communicate change at a rapid pace, but what is actually communicated, a lot of that stays the same.   As well, lifespan is and was a major factor.  Many things were more frenetic in the past.  Just the physical exercise of getting around has changed drastically, among all the other things.
     I studied a kaleidoscope of subjects over the last 45 years (My adulthood), and was fortunate enough to survive those years too, and that is from where this book is written.  Devils Garden is still there today, north of Okeechobee, but not in the place where I put it.  Really, there were many Devils Gardens in early Florida, and to the early explorers who died here, I am sure the whole place was one vast Devils Garden.           
     I got a fair amount of my information from early maps of Florida.  Many even show individual homesteads and small encampments from that time period.  Some of my place names come from the Celi map of the 1700s, it shows all the oldest Spanish terms for everything.  The first mission in Tampa was up the Rio San Julian y Arriaga quite a good ways, St. Theresa, near where Buffalo Boulevard crosses the Hillsborough now.  I have visited that site many times too, though it is under houses in a wealthy riverside neighborhood now.   
     At that place there are ghosts everywhere.
      
 
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