In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Thursday, December 20, 2018
SAVING FISH ISLAND AS PART OF ST. AUGUSTINE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK AND NATIONAL SEASHORE
Thanks to WUFT reporters Max Chesnes and Imani J. Jackson.
GOOD WORK by the journalists at the University of Florida's WUFT re: Fish Island and the slave graves here in St. Augustine. Fifty (50) of us testified against D.R. HORTON's proposed Planned Unit Development. We won. No appeal.
What's next? Buying Fish Island from the landowner, to make it part of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
(Illustration by Jerald Pinson)
The Fate of Fish Island
America’s largest homebuilder proposes developing one of the last private-owned wild swaths in coastal St. Augustine. By Max Chesnes
America’s largest homebuilder proposes developing one of the last private-owned wild swaths in coastal St. Augustine.
Fish Island photograph courtesy Walter Coker
Perhaps it was a miracle that Fish Island survived the Spanish conquest of the 16th century. No cannons, colonies or conquistadors landed on this humble stretch of forest nestled alongside St. Augustine’s 312 bridge.
And perhaps it was another miracle that Fish Island survived the British buccaneers of the 17th century. In the midst of revolution, turmoil and political uncertainty, this 72-acre island of pine trees, eagle’s nests and wetlands remained unscathed by the series of raids and pillaging that marked the history of America’s oldest European settlement.
Then came the 18th century, when part of the island was developed as a citrus estate by a settler named Jesse Fish. Ultimately, nature took back the once-famed orchards and a plantation house.
But like many of Florida’s remaining forests and wetlands, Fish Island’s luck may be running out amid intense urban population growth in the 21st century. The largest homebuilder in America, D.R. Horton, has plans to develop the slim peninsula that also serves as a barrier to rising seas — and may hold archaeological evidence of enslaved Africans in a city that has done so much to preserve its Spanish heritage.
Company officials presented their proposal to St. Augustine’s Planning and Zoning Board in July. The development plan initially included 170 single-family housing units, two roadways and an amenity center.
Here’s what one segment of the Fish Island parcel might look like developed, compared to recent satellite imagery. Slide to compare.
After the initial request was denied because of a disagreement in Florida zoning codes, the company proposed an altered planned unit development (PUD) to the board in August. In what city staff described as “the highest attendance in the board’s history,” more than 100 citizens voiced their concerns about D.R. Horton’s plans.
The board unanimously denied the PUD application. And now, the company’s 30-day window to appeal has lapsed. Still, St. Augustine citizens are in the dark about the fate of Fish Island.
At 28, Jen Lomberk has helped lead the charge to save Fish Island from development, pushing against daunting trends: The third-fastest growing county in Florida, St. Johns County is also one of the fastest-growing in the nation, according to the U.S. Census.
“It’s completely understandable that people want to live here,” Lomberk said. “But our goal is to promote smart, sustainable development as opposed to irresponsible building.”
As the Matanzas Riverkeeper, Lomberk has a strong appreciation for water quality. Most of the threats and pollution found in the Matanzas are directly tied to urbanization and development, she said. So, she’s traded her daily routine of oyster gardening and educating children for an aggressive social media campaign informing the public on the importance of conserving Fish Island.
“The first thing that people see when they cross into our island shouldn’t be a bunch of D.R Horton houses,” Lomberk said.
Jim Young, president of the Young Land Group and current owner of the Fish Island property, declined to elaborate on the company’s next steps. His staff, and other owners of the property, will field no interviews until January at the earliest, he said. D.R. Horton representatives also declined to comment on the future of Fish Island.
St. Augustine City Commissioners who would ultimately decide on whether the development can proceed have been notably quiet on the matter.
The majority of the county commission, not bound by political obligation in the island’s fate, have voiced support for conserving Fish Island. Options to turn the land into a park, boat ramp or conservation site have all been discussed.
Not only would the projected development be an eyesore, Lomberk said, but it would have considerable environmental impact. It also seems to defy wisdom on coastal resilience in the face of rising seas.
An immersive 360-degree video of Fish Island. (May require desktop device and Google Chrome to view) Video by Max Chesnes.
According to Federal Emergency Management Agency flood standards for St. Johns County, all development must be built 9 feet above sea level. Fish Island, and most of the surrounding peninsula, sit at around 4 feet, according to a survey by Gulfstream Design Group engineer Matt Lahti.
If its plans are approved, D.R. Horton would have to clear and fill the grassy parcel because it’s so low, Lomberk said. Fish Island’s plant and animal life would suffer, and long-term, St. Augustine would lose yet another buffer between development and rising seas.
“There’s several places in the county that have been built in such low-lying, vulnerable places now that millions of dollars are being spent to retrofit the infrastructure,” Lomberk said. “People want to be close to the water, but we’re building on a lot of the property that is most vulnerable to sea level rise.”
At the plan board meeting this fall, former St. Augustine Beach Mayor Gary Snodgrass pointed to the beach town’s move to buy land for Ocean Hammock Park as a way local government can protect from over-development, preserve wildlife and better prepare for sea-rise. That project was funded with a grant from the Florida Communities Trust Fund.
Advocates also suggest that Florida Forever, the state’s public-land acquisition program, could be one source of funding to purchase Fish Island from its owners and preserve the land in the name of conservation and climate adaptation.
“But first, the state needs to know what’s happening here,” Lomberk said, “The people want to keep Fish Island as the doorway to our community.”
It’s a brisk October morning, about 48 degrees with ocean salt mixed into the chilled air. A small group of seven activists hoist a tent at the local St. Augustine farmers market, awaiting the surge of shoppers.
Today, Susan Hill’s fight is just beginning.
One local activist tells the story of Jesse Fish.
Hill and her husband, Jon Hodgin, have worked tirelessly to put together a “Save Fish Island” campaign ever since she heard of D.R. Horton’s plans, she said. As the city’s population continues to rise, she has since spent hundreds of hours researching, studying and communicating the history of Fish Island.
“We’re a grassroots project made of ordinary people” Hill said. “But today, we’re here to preserve and conserve Fish Island.”
An expert on the land’s history, Hill has made it her mission to spread awareness on Fish Island’s historic past, she said.
“Most people we speak to haven’t heard the story of Fish Island, which exists only in bits and pieces dating from the 1700s to the present,” Hill wrote in a 17-page historical narrative she co-authored with her husband, entitled Fish Island’s Historical Past: A Citizen’s Perspective on What We Stand to Lose.
“Sometimes we don’t realize the value of something until we stand to lose it, forever.”
Hill’s home is filled with hundreds of historical documents she collected from the St. Augustine Historical Society research library. There may be enough evidence, Hill believes, to prove there are unmarked slave burials on Fish Island.
This map, one of Hill’s many documents on Fish Island. depicts all potential land owned by Jesse Fish in the 18th century. / Photo: Max Chesnes
Susan Hill reviews a journal entry, one of her many documents on Fish Island’s history. / Photo: Max Chesnes
One online petition to save Fish Island has received over 3,500 signatures since its creation in July. While signatures are a great place to start, more action and advocacy need to take place, Hill said.
Hill’s drive to save the peninsula is inspired in part by what she sees on the south side of the 312 bridge as she drives toward the ocean from the mainland.
Like many St. Augustine residents, Hill commutes daily over the 312 bridge to get to US Highway 1. On one side of the bridge lies untouched Fish Island. The other is a warning sign for the island’s potential future.
Antigua, a future residential neighborhood by development group Dream Finders Homes, is under construction. All trees have been removed from the land.
“One day I looked to the right and saw this previously undeveloped land now looked like the face of the moon,” Hill said. “It was completely flattened.”
Lush Fish Island, with all of its trees and wetlands, stands in poignant juxtaposition to the construction project already underway, Hill said. It is a reminder for what could potentially happen to this land – and much more of St. Johns County and Florida.
“I was so horrified, I couldn’t believe it,” Hill said. “I’m so tired of seeing our natural resources disappear.”
Graves of the Enslaved?
By Imani J. Jackson
Evidence suggests enslaved African people may be buried on St. Augustine’s Fish Island, now eyed for luxury homes.
Florida oranges, depending on who you ask, represent varied histories. Some may know Florida supplies an outsized share of U.S. citrus. Others may know plantation labor kick-started citrus grove expansion. Even fewer likely know that if expedited development of Fish Island, where El Vergel plantation once operated, occurs then new luxury homes may bury human remains, unmarked graves, and other artifacts from enslaved African people who lived, labored and likely perished on the island.
Named for Jesse Fish, the English Protestant settler from New York who once owned it and most of St. Augustine, Fish Island lies near the Matanzas River. It forms part of Anastasia Island, its estimated 72 acres annexed in sprawl.
Born in 1724 or 1726, Jesse Fish later moved to St. Augustine as a child for work. About a decade later, he began trade with the city. Though he visited New York, South Carolina and Cuba, Fish maintained residence at his plantation El Vergel until he died there in 1790.
El Vergel, which means “the garden” or “the orchard,” fuels lore about Fish. In its heyday, plantation laborers produced globally lauded oranges, other citrus and “orange shrub,” an alcoholic beverage.
Fish Island riveted other colonial settlers. Andre Michaux, a French botanist, wrote praises after his 1788 visit to El Vergel. Michaux wrote that Fish’s oranges were succulent, large “and more esteemed than those brought from the West Indies.”
This line drawing in the December 1874 edition of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine accompanied a travelogue called the “The Ancient City” by the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, who wintered in St. Augustine and wrote about Fish Island.
Of course, notable southern plantations did not run themselves. Enslaved African people, and sometimes indentured European people and captured Native American people, supplied the labor, despite sub-tropical heat and risk of infectious diseases. If Michaux’s time estimate — that Fish’s orchard had operated for 40 years by the time Michaux visited — held true, then Fish would have established El Vergel around 1750.
As Vanderbilt University historian Jane Landers wrote in her book Black Society in Spanish Florida, Fish introduced “most of the African-born slaves registered” in Florida between 1752 and 1763. Landers also noted Cuban records of these “slave imports” to Florida.
Visually, the record is jarring. One can consider whether the ubiquity of Fish’s name or his ownership of children ages five, eight and nine is more troubling. During this period, Fish is the listed owner of more than 100 African people.
A 1972 certificate placing Fish Island on the National Register of Historic Places signed by Governor Reubin Askew. Documents supporting the listing identified the site as Florida’s first orange grove.
Beyond those records, though, the Florida lives and fates of these African people is unclear. With gaps in the written and archaeological records, some St. Augustine residents have advanced cultural heritage and gravesite respect arguments in support of preserving the federally recognized property.
They hope city officials, a private landowner and a major home developer will consider whether irreparable harm will result if the community – proposed but uncertain — is constructed on the island.
These residents seek preservation of Fish Island as an archaeologically and environmentally significant site. They hope to inspire broader grassroots advocacy and knowledge of potential harm development could cause. At the same time, they are sensitive to not interfering with the developer’s contract given Florida jurors’ determination in a Stuart case earlier this year that a longtime environmentalist exceeded her free speech rights and illegally undermined a developer’s deal.
St. Augustine residents Susan Hill and Jon Hodgin have taken particular interest in Fish Island’s cultural preservation. The married, retired UF College of Medicine professors researched and wrote a text called “Fish Island’s Historical Past: A Citizen’s Perspective on What We Stand To Lose” to inform the community.
The work reflects concern that development of Fish Island may hasten Afro-erasure. “All parts” of St. Augustine history “are worthy of being told, recognized, and preserved,” Hill said.
This history includes a 1787 census, on which Fish reported 17 slaves, and several accounts that Fish owned, traded and managed many enslaved African people. The level of Fish’s slave ownership contributed to city archaeology experts’ statement: “it is probable that there was some mortality [on Fish Island].”
But, where? Whether enslaved African people died on Fish Island and, if so, the dispositions of their bodies, highlights colonial British and Spanish tensions. Modern Florida law also makes provisions for certain human burial sites.
In Black Society, Landers wrote that some Spanish Catholics in St. Augustine believed English Protestantism “infected” enslaved Africans. She also explained that some Black Catholics could be buried in mainland St. Augustine’s Tolomato cemetery, where Spanish, mixed race and other Catholics were often buried.
However, Fish was Protestant. Despite being bilingual (English and Spanish), his apparent Spanish cultural acumen and upbringing with a Spanish family, he did not “pass” for Catholic. To this point, as Hill and Hodgin wrote, “It [is] unlikely that he would have allowed his slaves to be baptized as Catholics.”
Where, then, would African, unbaptized, enslaved laborers for Fish be buried?
The city of St. Augustine balances its duties to respect private property rights with its obligations to protect archaeologically significant artifacts. An archaeological review at Anastasia Island, including parts of Fish Island, yielded a 2001 preliminary cultural resource assessment by archaeologists Andrea P. White and Carl D. Halbirt. They documented substantial findings, including evidence of Fish’s tomb, about 230 feet south of the main house, another tomb, and a wharf where “goods and people were transported across the bay [from the island] to St. Augustine.”
A 2001 preliminary cultural resource assessment by archaeologists Andrea P. White and Carl D. Halbirt described these stones at Fish Island as “the foundations to the once magnificent two-story coquina stone house of Jesse Fish.” While they documented “scattered artifact deposits” associated with a probable slave residence, the location of any slaves burials remains unknown.
They listed standard “data recovery” steps for these kinds of cultural assessments of property, including visual examination for surface remains; a systematic shovel-and-auger survey to determine the extent of human occupation across the area; and testing of excavated units.
White and Halbirt documented “scattered artifact deposits” associated with a probable slave residence on Fish Island. Moreover, they noted, “the possibility exists for slave burials on the island, but their location is unmarked and unknown.”
Given El Vergel’s decades of operation under Fish, including when the plantation boasted a reported 3,000 mature orange trees, and laborers provided international shipments of goods, “some [enslaved African people] surely must have died there,” Hill and Hodgin wrote.
Anthropologist and St. Augustine native Marsha A. Chance has professionally supervised surveys of Anastasia Island and parts of Fish Island. Chance expressed a sense that African burials were possible on Fish Island, tempered by practical challenges of proof.
“We know he had slaves and he had a lot of them,” Chance said. Based on customs of the era, she asserted the unlikelihood that unmarked graves of the enslaved would be close to primary plantation buildings. If present, slave graves, she said, would “be at a distance from that area.”
During a city planning and zoning board meeting in August, Chance was among about three dozen residents who spoke in opposition to an application to rezone the site for 170 homes and neighborhood amenities. Chance also requested “ground-penetrating radar to search for additional human burial remains.”
Who may be there?
The 2001 White and Halbirt report suggested Fish underreported the number of enslaved Africans on his plantation and raised the possibility of mixed-race Fish descendant remains on Fish Island.
By 1790, Jesse Fish, who established El Vergel, died. Because Fish died in debt, his estate, which included enslaved African people, was auctioned to satisfy creditors, as Landers wrote.
Fish’s son, Jesse Jr., later bought back part of his father’s estate. Jesse Jr. fathered seven children with an Afro-descendant woman named Clarissa who some historians describe as Jr.’s slave or mistress. Others called her his “common-law wife.”
Yet, “what became of the plantation and its occupants” after Jesse Fish Sr.’s wife, Sarah, died, “is presently unknown,” White and Halbirt wrote.
For now, connections between Fish Island history and prospective African burials are conceptual, Chance said. “The idea that there would be a slave cemetery is something that has been reached by logic.”
Logic, she reasoned, would also provide that if enslaved Africans — who, like Fish, were Protestant and not Catholic — died on El Vergel that they would not have been brought by boat from Fish Island for burial in mainland St. Augustine.
But definitive proof would require more-sophisticated investigation. “I can’t say there’s any one person who has walked every inch of that property,” Chance said.
So, are enslaved African people in, on, or around Fish Island? Are Fish descendants, free mixed-race people of color, buried there? What now?
The City of St. Augustine, state of Florida and University of Florida have “gone to great lengths in forming alliances to preserve the history” of St. Augustine, a place “we all love so much,” Hill and Hodgin wrote.
Those alliances produced UF Historic St. Augustine Inc. (UFHSA). In its articles of incorporation, the non-profit lists preservation, restoration and maintenance of “historical” landmarks, sites and remains in the St. Augustine area as reasons for its existence. That founding document further provides that UFHSA may “solicit, raise, accept and receive” grants, gifts and other property to support cultural and archaeological preservation in and around St. Augustine.
Given Fish Island’s location in and significance to St. Augustine, resolution of this challenge presents a special opportunity. The same trifecta that produced UFHSA could marshal its economic, intellectual and political resources to proffer sensitive alternatives to development.
Timely and equitable action for Fish Island would, as Hill and Hodgin said, let those who may be there “rest undisturbed in this place.”
Peak Florida
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