Beyond brutalizing Pine Island’s present and future, the recent spate of hurricanes affected its past as well – or at least the repository of its past.
Stretching over some 70 acres, the Randell Research Center, a satellite of Gainesville’s Florida Museum, offers a centuries’-wide window onto the island’s culture. Fortunately, after Helene and Milton slammed it with storm surge flooding and 120 mph winds, a corps of volunteers stepped up to help keep that window open.
The complex includes several Calusa Indian shell mounds, a hand-dug canal, an interpretive center and a boardwalk through native plants the Calusa used. So important were mollusks to the Calusa, they’re also known as “the Shell Indians,” since their diet, building materials and tools were largely mollusks…