Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Detectorist And Daughter on John Brooks. Photo by Melissa G. |
I just received the above photo with the following cool message.
I feel so honored to be anonymously mentioned on your blog today! I was the wife you mentioned sitting in the car with my daughter keeping cool. Funny story- As we were waiting in the car, I actually refreshed my web browser to see if you had published a blog post for the day yet. I read your blog every day. Were you the gentleman that pulled up to the right of us? I hope our paths may cross again someday so I can meet the inspiration behind the Treasure Beaches Report blog. Your dedication is inspiring, and I thank you for all the effort, time, and knowledge you put into your content each day creating interesting and informative reads for people along the treasure coast and around the world to enjoy.
As you mentioned, the beach conditions were indeed very mushy and sanded in today. We realized once observing the beach that the odds of my husband finding anything of value today with the detector was not in our favor. He walked out with a few old nails, but none time period.
Thank you again for creating a blog that I look forward to reading each day.
Sincerely,
Melissa
Thanks for writing Melissa. That is one adorable photo.
Best wishes to you all.
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Florida's colorful history of explorers, pirates, frauds, magnates and storied spots such as the Fountain of Youth excites the imagination and draws adventurers like no other place. Under the Nova Southeast University campus in Davie, lies the abandoned runway that, on Dec. 5, 1945, sent Navy torpedo bombers into the Bermuda triangle, never to return. Myths and mysteries, as well as real treasures abound. Before George Lucas ever imagined Indiana Jones or Raiders of the Lost Ark, Florida adventurers sought the location Mayan pyramids with snake filled stone chambers hidden in the Everglades.
Two maps labeled "Pyramids of the Everglades" along with attached notes and letters were discovered in a secure vault along with a broad assortment of oddities in the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (formerly known as the Miami Science Museum or Miami Science Museum and Space Transit Planetarium), but the location as given on the map is very general and could not be easily verified (See reference below). The letters described snake-filled pyramids very much like those of Indiana Jones. As is typical of treasure maps, though, they didn't make the pyramids, hidden in the vast swamps, easy to find.
I won't mention the names of all the people associated with the letters and maps now. I expect to get back to some of those in the near future, but if you look into the article, you'll see at least one familiar name - L. Frank Hudson. Behind the scenes, however, is another name - Vernon Lamme. I don't think his name was mentioned in the article talking about the discovery of the maps, but from what I've learned through my own research, Lamme might be one of Frank Hudson's contacts and unnamed sources.
You can find the obituary of Vernon Lamme online. Here is the link. Vernon Lamme - St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Merritt Island (stlukesmi.org)
Mr. Lamme moved from Kansas to Florida in 1912 with his father. As homesteaders, they staked a. claim and cleared land to grow citrus on Merritt Island. Vernon wrote for a variety of newspapers. In the 1930s he began doing archaeology.
After authoring a bill to establish a position for a state archaeologist, he became the first state archeologist - not only the first state archaeologist of Florida but the first state archaeologist of any of the United States. His term was not without problems.
After leaving the position, he excavated archaeological mounds on the Marineland property and turned the archaeological site into paying proposition, charging for tours.
He once again became the state archaeologist in 1940 and served again for a few years.
As is naturally the case with obituaries, they do not get into all the details. There was some controversy surrounding Mr. Lamme. There are suggestions, for example, that artifacts went missing.
So how does that have anything to do with the pyramids in the Everglades?
While there are various reports of the existence of those pyramids, there is also skepticism. There are ancient pyramids around the state. They aren't Egyptian pyramids, and maybe not even Mayan pyramids, but there are ancinet pyramids in Florida, and you can still see some of them. See Shell Mounds in Florida: Portals to the Past (visitflorida.com) which lists several you can visit. The VisitFlorida web site also provides the following picture and paragraph.
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These curious Native American sites are scattered around the Sunshine State. In the modern era, many of these shell mounds in Florida were looted for road building, but today the cherished relics are understood to be more than just slag heaps of mastodon teeth and bone. Some are pyramid-shaped and many were ceremonial. While most of the stories and rituals have been lost to time there is enough left to allow us to step back 1,000 years...
So, maybe we don't have Mayan pyramids, but we do have pyramid shaped mounds. And Lamme most certainly knew about them and investigated them.Many of the most impressive of these pyramids are over on the Gulf Coast - Hudson's stomping grounds. In fact, he was once convicted of digging into a mound on the Gulf Coast. Coincidentally, Lamme actually moved to the Gulf Coast for a short time. I won't get into all the evidence, but I believe Lamme was one of Hudson's anonymous sources.
So, are there actually Mayan pyramids in the Everglades? I haven't seen anything that looks like the big stone Mayan structures that you think of when you think of Mayan culture, but there are ancient pyramid-shaped mounds in Florida. Whether they are Mayan or not is another matter. There is some evidence of a Mayan influence, if not habitation, in Florida. I'll have to save most of that for some other time, but here is a link to an interesting web site suggesting Mayan influence on Florida pottery.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
We are having some nice big tides now. And the surf for Tuesday is still looking good. If we can actually get an eight-foot surf coinciding in time with a big high tide like the ones we have today, there is a very good chance there will be some good finds like those made in 2020 even without northeast winds.
I was concerned that the big surf predictions wouldn't hold. I hope they don't disappear in the next couple of days.
Remembering 9/11 tragedy today,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net