Nature’s Warehouse

The buffer protects federally listed species, like these bachelor’s buttons, and their equally rare and endangered habitats.

Legend has it that after the Great Spirit breathed life into all the Earth, he wondered what to do with his many leftover natural beauties and exotic creatures.  Reluctant to consign these treasures to the cosmic trash bin, he decided instead to warehouse them, and so he created Florida.

For bedrock the Great Spirit borrowed a chunk of Africa from what is today West Senegal, and sutured it onto Georgia. This he mortared over with chalky, porous limestone consisting of salt water and the fossilized bones, scales and shells of marine creatures which had been left high and dry during the successive tidal ups and downs of the Ice Age.

Read the entire article in the Summer 2003 issue