The Fakahatchee Strand (Mikasuki , meaning "muddy creek") is a strand swamp in Collier County, Florida. It is the largest and best known strand swamp and hosts a large variety of plants in several diverse habitats. The Fakahatchee Strand is in the Big Cypress Swamp, but not in the national preserve. It has a tropical climate and hosts both temperate and tropical plants. In many parts it resembles a tropical rainforest.
The Fakahatchee used to be dominated by bald cypress trees. In the mid-20th century almost all of the mature cypress trees in the strand, as well as in the rest of the Big Cypress Swamp, were logged out. Attempts to drain wetlands to allow residential and commercial development during the 20th century lowered the water levels in the strand. Remediation efforts starting in the 1970s have partially restored water levels in the strand. Most of the Fakahatchee Strand has been protected in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park since the 1970s. The northern part of the Fakahatchee Strand is protected in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.
The Fakahatchee Strand hosts a large number of vascular plants and lichens, more than half of which are tropical. It hosts several species found nowhere else in the contiguous United States, and a number of rare species or subspecies. Many plants and animals found in the Fakahatchee are classified as endangered or otherwise threatened. Well known rare species found in the Fakahatchee Strand include the Florida panther and the ghost orchid.
Location Most of the Fakahatchee Strand is in the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, which covers about from Alligator Alley (I-75) south to the Ten Thousand Islands in Collier County. The northern end of the strand (north of Alligator Alley) is in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. The state park includes mangrove forests and salt marshes south of the Tamiami Trail (US 41) which are not part of the Fakahatchee Strand. The state park is southeast of Naples and west of Miami. The eastern boundary of the state park is along or close to Florida State Road 29 and just west of the Big Cypress National Preserve. While the Fakahatchee Strand is part of the Big Cypress Swamp, it is not in the national preserve, but has been designated by the state of Florida as part of the Big Cypress Area of Critical State Concern. The Picayune Strand State Forest, also part of the Big Cypress Swamp, is adjacent to the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park to the west.
Description The Fakahatchee Strand is the largest strand swamp in the world. It contains the most diverse collection of native orchids and bromeliads in the United States. It hosts five plant species that are found nowhere else in the United States. The strand has the largest number of native (Florida) royal palms in the United States and contains most of the only royal palm and bald cypress forest in the world. It also has many other rare plants and animals. The Fakahatchee Strand more closely resembles a rainforest of the Neotropical realm than anywhere else in the continental United States. It has a high density of rare plants and the highest diversity of epiphytic ferns, bromeliads, peperomias, and orchids in the continental United States.
The climate in the Fakahatchee Strand is tropical. Annual rainfall ranges from , averaging in the strand. Eighty percent of the annual rain falls in May through September. The coldest month is January with a mean temperature of . The hottest month is August with a mean temperature of . There are occasional freezes. Evapotranspiration in the strand is about per year. The high evapotranspiration rate is due to the low relief, slow drainage, retention of water in the interior, and the high mean temperature of the strand.
The elevation of the Fakahatchee Strand is between above mean sea level (msl). The strand is underlain by the limestone Tamiami Formation, which is exposed near the southern end of the strand, along the Tamiami Trail. Limestone creates a karst landscape. The sloughs, in which the stand forests exist, are karst features, linear solution depressions created by selective dissolution of the limestone. The limestone ls covered by thin soils of sand, sandy marl, clay, and fine shell fragments. Prior to drainage in the 20th century, soils were in direct content with or close to the water table. Organic material in the soil produces acids which dissolve limestone. A few deep sinkholes are located in the area of the strand. Deep Lake, which is near the Fakahatchee Strand, is deep. A peat deposit in the southern part of the strand is deep, and originated in 5200 Before Present (BP).
As of 2011 the Preserve was described as largely covered by mature secondary forests. The Fakahatchee Strand has a high diversity of vascular plants because it hosts both tropical (West Indian) and temperate flora.
History Early There are many archaeological sites in the Fakahatchee Strand, primarily Glades culture shell middens and mounds that may have been camping sites for people of the Glades culture. Seminoles took refuge in the Fakahatchee Strand during and after the Second and Third Seminole wars.
The Fakahatchee Strand first came to notice of botanists in the mid-19th century for the reported presence of royal palm trees. Some attempts were made to reach royal palm hammocks in the second half of 19th century. Further excursions by botanists into the Fakahatchee Strand came in the early 20th century.
Logging Almost all of the mature bald cypress trees in the Fakahatchee Strand (and elsewhere in the Big Cypress Swamp) were logged in the late 1940s and early 1950s, yielding five billion board feet of lumber. The Three Mile Swamp and Big Cypress Bend were the only parts of the Fakahatchee Strand in which bald cypress trees were not logged.
Narrow-gauge railroads were laid temporarily in the Fakahatchee and throughout the Big Cypress Swamp to aid in removing the cypress logs. Roadbeds for the lines were created with material dug out of borrow canals flanking the roadbeds. These roadbeds, commonly called "trams" in the Big Cypress Swamp, were 15 feet wide and two or three feet high. A main rail line, the East Main Tram, extended north–south up the center of the Fakahatchee strand. Branch trams extended about to the east and west of the main line. The branch trams were apart. Felled trees were pulled by chain to the nearest tram to be loaded on rail cars. The logs tore down other trees and dug up the ground as they were pulled along. Much of the other vegetation was destroyed or disturbed by the operations, removing the tree canopy. The ground exposed by the logging dried out and wildfires burned into the strand. One report counted over 10,000 royal palm trees destroyed, and said that orchid crowns big enough to fill a car were dumped into water.
The trams have become linear hammocks, supporting trees typically found in mesic hammocks, including laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia), cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto), swamp bay (Persea palustris), royal palm, myrsine (Myrsine cubana), marlberry (Ardisia escallonioides), sweet bay (Magnolia virginiana), gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba), Simpson's stopper (Myrcianthes fragrans), willow bustic (Sideroxylon salicifolium), and satinleaf (Chrysophyllum oliviforme). Southward flowing water in the strand accumulates in the borrow canal on the north side of each tram. The water eventually drains through "washouts", gaps in the trams, spaced about apart. The washouts were left to prevent the water on the north side from overtopping the trams, and were bridged to carry the railroad over them.
Big Cypress Bend, which, with the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, is one of just two areas in Florida in which large bald cypress trees were not logged off, has a long boardwalk through the old growth cypress trees. The Janes Memorial Scenic Drive is a dirt road on trams that allows motor vehicles access to the interior of the Fakahatchee State Park. Hiking trails in the state park are also on trams.
Hunting and agriculture Hunters used swamp buggies to penetrate the Big Cypress, damaging the marl prairies adjacent to the strands. Hunting cabins were built in the Big Cypress Swamp, including in the Fakahatchee. There are still hunting cabins, both abandoned and in use, in the Fakahatchee Strand. Orchids were also frequently collected from the strand. Deep Lake Prairie on the eastern edge of the Fakahatchee just north of Copeland was used for vegetable farming for much of the 20th century, but had returned to wet prairie by 1990.
Development and preservation The Gulf American Land Corporation started developing the Golden Gate Estates in the 1950s in the Picayune Strand west of the Fakahatchee Strand after the cypress trees had been logged out. Gulf America bought the Fakahatchee Strand from a lumber company in 1966 and began selling lots in unsurveyed swampland that they called Bermuda Ranch Grants. The company dug a network of drainage canals, the Faka Union Canal system, to drain the swamps. The lowered water label allowed several big wildfires to spread in Collier County in the 1970s, including one that burned almost one-quarter of Collier County and most of the Fakahatchee Strand.
Attempts were made in 1948 and 1964 to protect the Fakahatchee Strand, without success. The Florida state government began negotiations with Gulf America in 1972 to purchase of land in the strand that the company had bought in 1966. In the meantime, Gulf American was prosecuted for illegal dredge and fill operations at Cape Coral and paid the court-ordered damages in 1974 by turning land over to the state, including the Fakahatchee Strand. Florida began buying private holdings in the strand, but their locations were often uncertain because the land had not been surveyed.
Hydrology The Fakahatchee originally received most of its flowing water from the Okaloacoochee Slough, which runs from the Devil's Garden in Hendry County to just east of the north end of the Fakahatchee Strand in what is now the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, north of Alligator Alley. The Barron River Canal (the borrow pit for State Road 29) intercepts the slough, and diverts water from the Fakahatchee. The amount of water from the slough diverted from the Fakahatchee by the canal has been reduced by the installation of water control structures. Several culverts have also been placed under State Road 29 to permit water to flow from the Barron River Canal into the Fakahatchee.
Water usually flows across the surface (sheet flow in the Fakahatchee Strand. The flow is heaviest from June to October, but may stop entirely late in the dry season, and all water can disappear from the surface during droughts. The surface flow may reach as high as per second or per day. Most of the strand is underwater during the wet season, but may largely dry out during the winter in drier years. The bedrock is primarily limestone, and outcrops rarely rise high enough to remain above the water level year-round. The east–west oriented trams in the strand hold back the water, helping to maintain water levels even with the reduced post-drainage flow through the strand. There are chains of sinkhole lakes in the strand that are connected by shallow channels that may dry up in the winter.
Three rivers drain the lower end of Fakahatchee Strand. The Fakahatchee River flows from the Big Cypress Bend (which at one time was called "Fakahatchee") to Fakahatchee Bay in the Ten Thousand Islands. The East River flows from the lower end of the main strand to Fakahatchee Bay. The Ferguson River flows from near the Three Mile Swamp to West Pass Bay in the Ten Thousand Islands. Water from the eastern side of the strand also flows into the Barron River Canal which empties into Chokoloskee Bay.