Between 6000 and 4000 years ago, people began to inhabit the land
between the Tolomato River and the Atlantic Ocean. These early
inhabitants hunted deer and other animals, fished and collected
shellfish, and deposited shells in middens. A large (100 meters in
diameter and a meter in elevation) shell ring consisting of oyster,
clam, conch, and coquina is believed by some archeologists to be the
remains of a circular village. The elevated area was used as house sites
and the center was used for ceremonies. When Europeans arrived in the
sixteenth century, they found the descendants of these earlier people
living in villages surrounded by fields of corn, beans, peas, and
pumpkins. Known to Europeans as Timucuans, these Native Americans were
immortalized in the drawings of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues who
accompanied the Frenchman Rene de Laudonniere to Florida in 1564.
Over 35 land grants were recorded for the land now within the Guana
River WMA. Beginning in the 1770s, British Governor James Grant operated
an indigo plantation on the southern tip of the peninsula. In 1781,
another plantation was established to grow rice. Cattle and hogs were
also raised on the land and sugarcane grown. A network of dikes, levees,
and ditches were constructed as well as a rice and sugar mill.
When Florida was returned to Spain at the end of the Revolutionary
War, the Guana Tract was largely abandoned until Minorcan immigrants
began purchasing small tracts for farming.
In the early 1900s, canals were dug along the northern portion of the
Tolomato River for the northern expansion of the Atlantic Intracoastal
Waterway. In the 1920s, real estate investors and developers began to
consolidate these tracts in the hope of developing a residential
community. Their plans ended with the Depression. A small herd of
Spanish ponies inhabited the area until they were destroyed during
efforts to eradicate Texas tick fever. An intense pine harvest began in
the late 1930s and continued through the 1970s. Between 1931 and 1980,
impoundments were constructed for waterfowl hunting. Guana Lake was
created between 1957 and 1962 to increase and to enhance habitat for
waterfowl by damming the river and installing water control structures.
In 1984, the land was purchased by the state through its Conservation
and Recreation Lands (CARL) program, and Guana
Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve and Guana
River Wildlife Management Area were established.
