Jupiter Ridge Natural Area - The Great Florida Birding Trail on Waymarking.com

The History of Jupiter Ridge Natural Area

Two tracts were combined to form the majority of the Jupiter Ridge Natural Area. The first, the 33-acre Maddock tract, was owned by the Maddock family since 1900. The second, the 190-acre MacArthur tract, was owned by the Federal Government until 1927, when it was transferred to the State of Florida. The State sold it to C.E. Chillingworth in 1947. After a series of ownership changes, the tract was sold to Royal American Realty in 1972. Royal American Realty was a subsidiary of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and this property was transferred to the MacArthur Foundation in 1984. State sovereign lands, uplands in the ICW right-of-way, and a county road right-of-way constitute the remainder of the site. There is no evidence of any widespread human-caused clearing or alteration to the site.

American Indians, early explorers, and pioneers undoubtedly used Lake Worth Creek on the western edge of the site as a dugout canoe route to the interior of Palm Beach County. A report of the U.S. Army Topographical Engineers described Lake Worth Creek in 1841 as being 300 feet wide at its junction with the Loxahatchee River, but narrowing to 40 feet wide 5 miles upstream. The first major human impact in the vicinity of the site was the construction of a wagon road 1,000 feet east of the Natural Area. This road ran for 7.5 miles, from a dock on the south side of the Loxahatchee River, near its mouth, to another dock at the northern end of the Lake Worth Lagoon (Corbett 1993).

In 1888, construction began on the Jupiter and Lake Worth Railway adjacent to the wagon road. This 3-foot-wide, narrow-gauge railroad was dubbed the Celestial Railroad because it ran from Jupiter to Juno. The railroad was completed and began operation in 1889. Pioneer accounts indicate that passengers shot game animals from the railroad cars and that trees along the tracks may have been cut for fuel for the wood-burning engine.

The Celestial Railway ceased operation in 1895, as result of the 1894 construction of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad one mile west of the site. With its passengers and freight diverted to the more convenient long-haul railroad, the Celestial Railroad was forced to sell its engine and cars and abandon its tracks. The County converted the railroad tracks to a public road bed in 1895. The railroad ties were left to rot and the steel rails were removed in the mid-1930s (Corbett 1993). The former railroad bed was the only road in the vicinity of Jupiter Ridge until U.S. Highway 1 was built in the 1920s along the top of the oceanfront dune, one-half mile east of the Natural Area. This road is known today as State Road A1A. It was the only paved road in the vicinity of the site until the 1950s. The old Celestial Railroad road probably was used as a sand road until the 1950s, when present-day U.S. Highway 1 was built.

The major disturbance to the Natural Area began in 1892 with the dredging of the Florida East Coast Canal within the floodplain of Lake Worth Creek. Dredging proceeded in a sporadic fashion and the canal reached the Lake Worth Lagoon in 1898. Design dimensions for this canal were 50 feet wide and 5 feet deep. It is not known where the spoil from this canal was deposited. In 1927, the Florida East Coast Canal Company went bankrupt, and the Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) was created as a taxing district to take over operation of the canal. The Florida East Coast Canal was designated a federal project and was renamed the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), with project design dimensions of 100 feet wide and 8 feet deep (Corbett 1993). The ICW was dredged in the early 1930s.

The State of Florida gave the Federal Government an easement for the ICW right-of-way and grants for spoil disposal in 1932. These grants were released in 1935, but additional grants were made in 1936 to FIND that exist today. Spoil from dredging was pumped into wetlands adjacent to the ICW. Six spoil piles can be seen clearly in a 1940 U.S. Department of the Interior (USDI) aerial photograph of Jupiter Ridge (USDI 1940). Their locations are shown by four areas of the Quartzipsamment soil type (Figure 4). The spoil dumping eliminated most of the freshwater wetlands on the site. These spoil piles were visible in aerial photographs until 1970. Although the vegetative communities on these piles resemble scrubby flatwoods and xeric hammock natural communities, they still retain some characteristics of disturbed areas. The ICW was expanded to 125 feet wide and 10 feet deep in 1962, but additional spoil from this dredging does not appear on aerial photographs of Jupiter Ridge. It may have been deposited on the west side of the ICW.

By 1940, a sand road extended west along the section line from the old Celestial Railroad right-of-way to the ICW. This road may have been created to service a 3-foot-wide Florida Power & Light easement granted in 1927. On October 14, 1947, the Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners accepted this road as an 80-foot posted and viewed county road right-of-way. In 1955, acquisition began for the right-of-way of State Road 5, which is present-day U.S. 1. This road was constructed as a four-lane highway in the late 1950s.

Logging of the slash pines fringing the site's wetlands apparently occurred around 1940. Mosquito ditches were dug in the submerged and sovereign lands around 1960. These ditches did not appear to have a major effect within the mangrove islands of old Lake Worth Creek, but ditch spoil piles in fringe wetlands were colonized by Australian pines. Based on examination of aerial photographs and visual estimates of sand pine age, a wildfire appears to have burned most of the natural area around 1950. Another wildfire burned most of the center of the site in 1977. A third wildfire burned 9 acres in the western portions of the MacArthur tract in December 1992. This fire was started by children playing with matches.

In 1970, the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund dedicated the state sovereign lands bordering the ICW and Lake Worth Creek in virtually all of the Jupiter Ridge site as an aquatic preserve. In the early 1970s, Florida Power & Light obtained by a final judgement an expanded 37-foot easement to construct a high-voltage electrical transmission line in the county road right-of-way. This line apparently replaced a local transmission line that is visible in the 1965 property appraiser's aerial photograph. In 1977, the Elks Club facility was built on the northern border of the site. The Hook and Ladder restaurant was built southeast of the Elks Club in 1988. This restaurant was not successful and the building currently is vacant and unused.

The Bluffs development south of the Natural Area had a considerable impact on the site. Construction of the Bluffs began in 1984. In order to supply increased electricity demands from this development, Florida Power & Light constructed a substation in 1986 within the Natural Area that was adjacent to their transmission line. This station was accessed by a 1,000-foot-long crushed limestone road that was built from U.S. 1. Also in 1986, a construction staging area was bulldozed in the northern part of the site and a paved spur road was constructed from U.S. 1 to access the staging area. The staging area was used to make concrete wall sections that were assembled for Bluffs housing. Construction of the Bluffs ended in 1987, and the staging area was cleaned up and abandoned.

Several linear sand roads were bulldozed in the vicinity of the staging area in 1988. A surge in off-road vehicle (ORV) activity began at the same time. Increased ORV activity resulted in the expansion of existing trails, the creation of new trails, and the conversion of the centers of the northern and southern depression marshes from fern-dominated vegetation to mudholes. The damage from ORVs ceased in 1993 when the County fenced and barricaded the ORV access points.

In 1989, a Wal-Mart shopping center was proposed for the Maddock tract. This proposal was dropped after widespread public opposition. Also in 1989, the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI) submitted Jupiter Ridge as a CARL project, but it was not accepted for ranking. The Jupiter Ridge project was resubmitted by FNAI and Palm Beach County in 1991, and was ranked 49th. The County purchased the Maddock tract in December 1992 for $3,500,000 and the MacArthur tract in June 1993 for $19,600,000. The MacArthur tract was resold to the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund in July 1993 to obtain CARL matching funds of $9,297,750. The Maddock tract was resold to the Board of Trustees in July 1995 to obtain CARL matching funds of $1,749,900. A 50-year management lease to the County for the MacArthur tract and the state sovereign lands was executed on June 14, 1994 (Appendix G). A lease amendment that added the Maddock tract was executed on May 6, 1996.

Managing Agency: Dept. of Environmental resourses County: Palm Beach Cluster Name: Not listed

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