self catering orlando
 Home Page |
 Rooms |
 Booking & Enquiries |
 Map |
 York UK |
 Campanas |
self catering orlando, holiday, villa, florida, disney world, vacation, self catering orlando, rental, luxury, golf, course, self catering, pool, country club, Highlands Reserve, self catering orlando
> BASICS ABOUT FLORIDA
As Neil Armstrong returned to Earth from his historic walk on the Moon, the first place in the United States he noticed was appropriately Florida, the spot where his mission started. Sticking out into the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean in the southeast corner of the country, Florida is just so identifiable. The peninsular was just such a landmark to the Spanish conquistadors who viewed Florida as the front door to their great American Empire and to the beginning of North America.
The story of Florida the geographical place is quite short, a young land mass emerged from the ocean a few ticks on the geological clock. The story of Florida the modern historical place is longer than any other state. It is a story of innumerable different people: Indians and horse soldiers, sailors and pirates, priests and planters, sheriffs and outlaws, politicians and promoters, playboys and migrants, both the retired and the youthful. It is a history of how people from six different traditions - Indian, French, Spanish, English, Southern, and Modern American - came to the peninsula in search of a better life in a land which offered countless unique opportunities well into the twentieth century.
Florida's distinctive geographic location on the southeastern most shore of the United States makes the area part of Southern history: plantations, export economy, slave labor, and states-rights. But a closer look will note that Florida has a Western side. Pensacola is as far west as Chicago and the southern half of the peninsula was as sparsely inhabited by white men in 1860 as the Rocky Mountain states. Florida had its Indian wars, cowboys, fur trappers, gunfighters, and frontier life at the same time as the Western states.
FLORIDA - THE LAND
While this is a history of the people of Florida, it is still important to denote some important geographical factors. To first observers, Florida is very flat, without notable changes of elevation. Florida, the land, is relatively young by geological standards, rising out of the ocean some 300 to 400 million years ago. A body of water, known as the Florida Trench, separated North Florida from the swampy plains of South Florida.
After 200 million years, when dinosaurs roamed the land, these volcanic mountains eroded leaving a shallow sea where was once the Trench. Masses of sand and fossilized marine shell, called limestone, formed mounting layers of this underwater plateau. These layers finally arched upward to create a marshy plain at sea level, where fossilized bones and shell caused phosphate deposits.
During the Ice Age, one million years ago, the waters of the world filled into glaciers, thus lowering the level of the oceans. Florida grew to twice its present size. Saber-toothed tigers and mastodons roamed the cool swamplands of Florida. When the ice melted, the oceans again rose and cut Florida into terraces and upland plateaus.
In recent geologic history, sandbars have extended the coastline while coral grew along the warm waters. Coral, the skeletal deposits of dead sealife of anthozoan family, protected the southern shores from some erosion. Men made the other drastic land changes by closing off the natural flow of waters in great tidal marshes, by cutting down forest cover, and by filling in many bays and river inlets.