There had to be some settlers around here as early as 1800. The early pioneers wandered into the area, cleared areas, built huts and just lived here. They didn’t necessarily own the land, so they didn’t show up on government records. They left no “Official” tracks. But subsequent events could not have happened unless those earlier arrivals had already been established. The further back you go, the more tenuous the evidence becomes and documentation must be augmented by deductive reasoning.
If I may digress momentarily concerning the above mentioned hut, there are some misinformed types who label any frontier residence built of logs as being a cabin. A cabin is a one room affair. A cabin occupant with some social standing might add a porch in front and a shed room in the rear. A log residence of some size with a central hall (sometimes called a dog trot) and a separate kitchen was a log house, not a cabin.
But back in 1800, we can read various accounts of what was happening in St. Augustine, Pensacola, Mobile and be left with the impression that the Dixie, Levy and Gilchrist area was one big blank populated by Indians, rattlesnakes, bobcats and a few happy gophers.
I see the logic of the situation as indicating that settlers were in the Cedar Key area and around Long Pond by 1800 and there is not one shred of evidence to the contrary known to me.
One night in 1809, the earth was swinging sedately along in it’s orbit when a massive cloud of meteors got in the way. Some of them (the Perscids, the Leonids, who knows?) were pulled out of their own orbits by the earth’s gravitation and entered the atmosphere at terrific speeds. There would have been no astronomers nor other scientists down here then, just the adventurous pioneers. The pyrotechnic flashing and flaring all over the night sky must have been an awe-inspiring sight to behold. The older settlers would have called it a firestorm, one meteor was a shooting star.
A young man was riding his horse along a trail in the area west of Long Pond late that night, going home from a party at a neighbor’s house. The meteor shower started. Some of these would have been of some size and the large ones make a hollow, eerie roar as they streak across. The horseman saw the sky light up and heard the horrendous roars. He dismounted, tied his horse and calmly stood there waiting for the world to come to an end. For him that was the only logical conclusion to draw from what he was seeing and hearing. After about an hour the firestorm subsided, so he mounted his horse and rode home.
This legend was handed down through the successive generations of people in that area. I heard it from the late L.W. Drummond in about 1969. The point is, settlers had been here long enough to have parties.
Over the years, Gulf Hammock hunters have found pieces of what must be molten splatters that sloughed off nickel-iron meteorites. I have one such fragment (somewhere?). In that firestorm of 1809, there could have been a big one which landed over in Gulf Hammock. After all the years have passed, it’s crater would be a cypress pond with a particularly circular shape and an elevated ridge around it. If that pond is there, there is a big chunk of metal lying under it.
The slough-off phenomenon of a descending meteorite is well known, as in the case of the giant one which hit the desert near Flagstaff, Arizona about 5,000 years ago. Fragments of it were found ten miles away in El Diablo Canyon. If you ever get to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, the national park service has hauled one of those fragments (500 lbs) up there for the tourists, to gawk at. It was there the last time I was gawking at it.
So the evidence indicates that the sizeable meteorite crashed into the earth along the coastline, probably that night in 1809. The underside of my fragment shows just about the amount of ground-acids erosion that I would guess to be right to fit the number of years that I theorize it has lain there. Of course, the point of impact could have just as likely been out in the Gulf.
For the man riding his horse that night, the world did not come to an end. He would have died many years ago and the world goes on. But I wish I could have seen this place as it was then, no roads, no towns, just a great big wilderness of giant pines, cypress and live oaks. I try to imagine the sensation of walking through the fresh, primitive grandeur of such a place. The old cedar stands were there, the wild life would have been very abundant. Just look at what has happened since. No wonder the Indians got mad.
~ Unknown Author ~ Article courtesy of the Levy County Archives