Key Largo’s rock mound, discovered c. 1932, is part of the remains of an Indian village populated at least a thousand years ago. By 1200, archaeologist Irving Eyster believes, the site was abandoned. He bases this date on the style of pottery recovered.
This site in now partially occupied by the Caloosa Campground , bayside of U.S. One.
By the 1940s residents had severely damaged the site by hauling away rocks and dirt from the rock mound. Therefore, there is no chance of knowing what the village looked like, but this is what can be found from research of four reports of the village site dating from 1944 to 1996.
There are three important elements that can still be found. One. A habitation mound, mostly destroyed by activities at the campground, where there have been found hundreds of pieces of pottery by the campground owner, George Eager, and others. Two. A fresh water sinkhole nearby, which no archaeologist has investigated, and three. The rock mound itself. It was very likely a ceremonial center with an attached building (that building’s foundation, 25’ x 14’ x 1’ high was termed a causeway by one archaeologist). Speculations that the mound has Mayan connections or is an effigy mound seem to be just that. But that it was an important site was evident to Eyster, who termed it “a great complex”.
According to the most recent report, by archaeologists Christine L. Newman and Louis D. Tesar (1996), a test excavation revealed at least two separate construction/occupation sequences of the mound, which is 100’ x 55’ x 8’ high. “The Key Largo Rock Mound is unique,” said the archaeologists, “Perhaps the only example left of this type of site in Florida”. And one wonders, what were the ceremonies performed millenniums ago, by a people now extinct, at their village at Key Largo.
Sources: Reports by John M. Goggin, Eyster, Carlos Martinez, and Newman and Tesar, with maps of the site, can be found in the history collection of the Islamorada library.
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