Nocoroco Ruins
The centerpiece of Florida's Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach is the huge Frederick Dana Marsh sculpture of "Chief Tomokie," located atop the ancient ruins of the Native American settlement known as Nocoroco.
The sculpture is Marsh's artistic interpretation of the legend of Tomokie, whose arrogance in drinking from a sacred spring was paid for with his life and those of all his band. According to information at the site, references to the legend date back more than one hundred years.
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Completed sometime between 1931 and 1955, the 50-foot tall sculpture depicts the Chief "slain by Oleeta in defense of the golden cup"
From every angle the sculpture, atop and around a coquina base, takes on different colors and feel with the surrounding live oak and sabal palm landscape.
Below, I stand mimicking the pose of Chief Tomokie and giving some idea of the scale of the sculpture. I am about 6-feet tall.
There is little remaining of the midden that marked the settlement of Nocoroco. There is a coquina amphitheater that is now overgrown surrounding the sculpture but it was built by settlers, not the natives that inhabited this land.
The park was mostly deserted on a recent weekend afternoon aside from some panhandlers who appeared from behind the sculpture. After they were dispatched we saw few humans during our hike the length of the park.
The park was mostly deserted on a recent weekend afternoon aside from some panhandlers who appeared from behind the sculpture. After they were dispatched we saw few humans during our hike the length of the park.
Marsh, who largely retired from commercial art before age 50 settled in Ormond Beach when he married the artist Mabel Van Alstyne in 1931. There he built a Streamline Moderne beachside home known as the "Battleship House" (since demolished) which was extensively decorated with murals and relief sculptures.
More of Marsh's sculptures can be found outside the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach where he sculpted "The Four Muses" on the auditorium's exterior.
In addition the the Marsh sculpture there are 1,800 acres (7.3 square kilometers) of parkland located along the Tomoka and Halifax Rivers three miles north of Ormond Beach.
Among other activities in the park are canoe and kayaking. Both can be rented from a camp store in the center of the park.
The Tomoka River and the Halifax River meet at the north end of the park forming a natural peninsula. There are 12 miles of shoreline covering maritime hammock and estuarine salt marsh ecosystems.
NOCOROCO HISTORY
In the early 1600s, Spanish explorers found Indians living here in a village called Nocoroco. Although nothing remains of the village, shell middens, mounds of oyster and snail shells from decades of Native American meals, reach 40 feet tall along the river banks.
Approximately seven thousand years ago, during the Archaic Period, indigenous people found plentiful fish and shellfish at this site in the shelter of a barrier island to the east. The site was inhabited approximately twelve hundred years ago by the Timucuans, whose descendants were discovered there by Europeans. Alvaro Mexia visited Nocoroco in 1605, just as European acculturation had begun. Mexia's expedition explored down the east coast of Florida at the behest of the Spanish governor. This late St. Johns period site represents one of the last Timucuan strongholds in northeastern Florida. All that remains today of these native peoples are the shell middens, which help modern archaeologists document their lives.
Below: The remains of the coquina amphitheater under a massive canopy of live oaks.
The British occupation began in 1763 when Great Britain received Florida from Spain in a trade. The site of the village of Nocoroco was part of a British land-grant called Mt. Oswald, held by Richard Oswald. His plantation grew indigo and rice. After its return to the Spanish in 1783, the area was likely cultivated until many plantations were destroyed near the beginning of the Second Seminole War in 1835.
Today, these waters are popular for canoeing, boating, and fishing. The park protects a variety of wildlife habitats and endangered species, such as the West Indian manatee. Tomoka is a bird-watcher's paradise, with over 160 species sighted, especially during the spring and fall migrations. Visitors can stroll a one-half mile nature trail through a hardwood hammock that was once an indigo field for an 18th century British landowner. A boat ramp gives boaters and canoeists access to the river. The Park Store offers snacks, camping supplies, and canoe rentals.
HAMMOCK
The park is noted for its live oak hammock with arching limbs covered in Spanish moss, resurrection fern and green-fly orchids. Indian pipe, spring coralroot and Florida coontie grown under the hammock canopy, while wild coffee and tropical sage can be found on the shell middens.
SALT MARSH
Salt marshes adjacent to the rivers flourish with plant life, including black needlerush, spartina and glasswort. These marshes, flooded daily by Atlantic ocean tides, provide habitat, food and breeding grounds for oysters, snails, fiddler crabs and fish. Wading birds and hawks forage the marshes for their meals. Over 160 bird species have been documented at Tomoka.
During the summer, manatees take refuge with their young in the Tomoka River. Bottlenose dolphins occasionally surface, while the American alligator is a familiar resident. One often can see raccoons, bobcats, white-tailed deer and otters that come out late in the afternoons.
What Happened to Florida's El Niño Rains?
An unexpectedly dry Florida experienced less than an inch of rain since the first week of February 2016 (7 weeks). An equally unexpectedly dry Southwest has put a twist on this spring’s prospects for drought evolution and flood risk, according to dual outlooks recently issued by NOAA. Rain has begun to fall across the Florida peninsula today, finally, and we are grateful.
Above: Rocking chairs at the Park Store overlooking the Tomoka River.
The Unpredictable El Niño
of 2015-16
Central Florida Misses Out
on the Maya Express
Normally during a strong El Niño, winters tend to be wetter than average from California across the southern Rockies to the Gulf Coast. One of the strongest El Niños on record has been ongoing this winter. Every El Niño has its quirks, but this one has gone rogue in several ways, most notably in U.S. precipitation. Instead of slathering the southern tier of the U.S. with moisture, this El Niño has aimed its firehose in two distinct paths. One extends from central California north to Washington, and the other stretches from Texas and the Gulf Coast north and east into the Midwest and Southeast (plus south Florida). At times, these swaths have featured atmospheric rivers often referred to as the Pineapple Express (flowing from the central tropical Pacific to the West Coast) and the Maya Express (streaming from the Gulf of Mexico into the eastern U.S.).
Weather Forecasting
At the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center, climate scientists analyzed departures from average in this year's 500-mb wind (about four miles above sea level) for the Dec-Jan-Feb period. What is pretty clear is that the Pacific jet is shifted north of its normal position. The typical wintertime Aleutian low is weaker than it is normally during an El Niño event. The El Niño wave train is there; it is just not exactly where it is located typically. But no single year perfectly matches a ‘typical’ pattern. These sort of shifts are not unexpected to forecasters, which is why our forecasts are probabilistic (subject to of involving chance variation). A strong El Niño doesn't negate the fact there is uncertainty and it is intrinsic to the climate system.
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What 1992 Can Tell Us About Today
The unusual effects of this year's El Niño on USA's precipitation don’t resemble the other two “super” events in recent times (1982-83 and 1997-98). However, there is something of an analog. In a prototypical El Niño, the most unusually warm water and most concentrated convection (showers and thunderstorms) are in the far eastern tropical Pacific, which tends to bring the subtropical jet stream directly into the California coast.
This winter, the most anomalous warm water and convection has been in the central Pacific, close to the Date Line. The associated subtropical jet has occasionally punched into the Southwest but more often headed toward northern California, Oregon, and Washington. This was also the case in April 1992, toward the tail end of the strong El Niño event of 1991-92. Then, as now, the focus of El Niño’s oceanic warming was near the Date Line.
Current Precipitation Forecast
for USA
Current long-range forecasts (out 3-4 weeks) call for wet weather across all of Florida. We can hope that the forecast verifies.
Massive live oaks and incomparable river views are the hallmark of Tomoka State Park (above and below).
We've Read:
In Florida you could not pay anyone to pick up bottles and cans, there is no refund at all in Florida. In New York its a completely different story. New York City is trying to stop scavengers from recycling the government's recyclables. Maybe we could ship some of our endemic roadside litter to New York City? Better yet we could send them some of our politicians who regularly fight a bottle return fee and tell New York to keep them (the politicians, that is).
The head of this desolate Russian outpost on the Barents Seas wants to make a few things absolutely clear; Not all 1,000 residents are alcoholics; not everyone is depressed; and nobody has committed suicide, at least not recently.
If technology helps us save the wilderness, will the wilderness still be wild?
Most likely its something silly. Snakes, heights, public speaking. The paths that human fear can take are often ridiculous and pointless detours. . .
He deliberately sets up conservatives to fail by goading them into empty gestures and self-defeating stunts like shutting down government, which make it harder to persuade more Americans to embrace conservative policies. They can’t even be described accurately as Pyrrhic victories. They’re just abject failures. As for his recent defense of his wife appearance? She's a Wall Street Banker. That's the better characterization for him to try and defend.