Northwest Florida Getaways 2008 - (Page 20) parks TORREYA The Gregory House. continued from page 18 The Torreya, a tree that first grew when dinosaurs walked the earth, would be protected, along with the stands of beech, hickory and stubby needle palm that round out the park. The diversity of flora here is another reason local legend compares this to the hallowed place first mentioned in the Book of Genesis. Of the 25 trees listed in the Bible, all have grown here at one time or another. In the early 1950s, however, the famous Torreya trees began to slowly disappear. One by one, the old giants fell. A half-century later, less than 1,000 of these magnificent trees are still alive, survivors of a rare tree fungus that scientists are still trying to understand. Most of the Torreya trees still found in the area are from seeds deposited since the blight first hit. There are still plenty of these rare trees, but you have to be willing to walk. And that is the beauty of this state park: The longer you spend here, the more treasures you will discover. including Pseudemys concinna, better known as the Suwannee cooter. This turtle with yellow stripes on its head is found mostly in Florida’s Big Bend and Northwest. Gulf of Mexico and Europe. At its peak, more than 200 steamboats traveled the Apalachicola River each day. During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers saw the importance of protecting this trade route from Northern raiders, who had control of the open water. The Confederates knew that whoever controlled Torreya’s bluffs, controlled the river. They built a sixgun cannon battery overlooking the Apalachicola River. Today, the guns are gone, but you can still see where they (and their communication trenches) rested if you take a hike along the park’s Bluff Trail. During the Antebellum era, the Northwest was different from the rest of Florida. The region that includes Torreya State Park had more in common, economically and geographically, with its neighbors to the north than it did with the rest of the peninsula. In the 19th century, a series of large, plantations stretched from Jacksonville west to Pensacola. Most have of these houses have been lost to time, but visitors can catch a glimpse of that era by visiting The Gregory House on the park grounds. Built in 1849 by the planter Jason Gregory, this Greek Revival-style house once stood at Ocheesee Landing, on the other side of the river. In 1935, when Torreya was in the process of becoming one of Florida’s first state parks, workers dismantled the wooden structure and moved it, piece by piece, by barge, to its current location. Tours are conducted at 10 a.m. daily; on weekends, additional tours are held at 2 and 4 p.m. continued on page 22 Seminole Bluff History buffs are also drawn to the area, intrigued by the spot’s strategic significance and views from Torreya’s bluffs overlooking the Apalachicola River. Long before white men came to Florida, Native Americans found the bluffs an ideal place to set up villages as the area provided a natural defensive position. From this vantage point, a watchful eye could see anything – be it an alligator or a dugout canoe – that moved north or south. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, runaway slaves from the British and then American territories to the north found sanctuary here. Later, in 1818, General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, marched through what was then Spanish Florida in pursuit of Seminole Indians and their African-American allies. Jackson, who would become the country’s seventh president, is said to have crossed the Apalachicola River with his army at this spot. Ten years later, after Florida became a U.S. territory, the federal government built a road across the northern part of the peninsula, ending it here on the bluffs that are 150 feet above the river. By 1845, the year Florida became the 27th state, steam-powered freighters were chugging up and down the river, carrying cotton bales on a waterway that linked the Deep South with the ‘Most of the Torreya trees still found in the forest are saplings from seeds deposited since the blight first hit.’ Botany lovers come to Torreya for more than that famous tree. In addition to Noah’s tree, you will find the rare Florida yew (a cousin to the Torreya), the queen magnolia (the largest magnolia in the United States) as well as cypress and tupelo. In a 1999 wildlife survey, park managers recorded more than 100 species of birds, five species of tree frogs and a wide variety of Florida natives 20 VISITFLORIDA.com/northwest http://VISITFLORIDA.com/northwest
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