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All the history of Juno Dunes Natural Area

Prior to drainage and other human-caused alterations, the Juno Dunes Natural Area was a relatively simple natural system. All the land lying below five feet above sea level was occupied by freshwater wetlands, which were almost exclusively sawgrass marsh. All the land above five feet in elevation was scrub, which graded into coastal strand and rudimentary maritime hammock near the Atlantic Ocean. A narrow fringe of cabbage palms, slash pines, and a few live or laurel oaks occurred in the transition zone between the scrub and the sawgrass marshes. Wildfires were frequent, starting in the sawgrass marshes and spreading northeast until they burned out at the ocean's edge. As a result of the frequent fires, the scrub habitat was dominated by dwarfed scrub oaks. Sand pines could not become established because the frequent fires would kill the young trees before they had produced a large enough number of cones to assure the growth of the next generation. Jonathan Dickinson, who was shipwrecked in the vicinity of the Natural Area, noted in his journal in 1697 the scrubby vegetation and lack of trees in the area south of the Jupiter Inlet.

The written observations of soldiers and early pioneers were the basis for determining the historical vegetation of this site. The Natural Area is part of the headwaters of the former Lake Worth Creek, a meandering blackwater creek that flowed northward to join the Loxahatchee River near its mouth at the Jupiter Inlet. The earliest accounts of the Natural Area date from the 1840s, and were from U.S. Army Topological Engineer reports made during the Second Seminole Indian War (Corbett 1993). Eighty men from Fort Jupiter moved up Lake Worth Creek in seventeen canoes. At the northwest corner of the Natural Area, they reached the "rapids", a series of muck terraces that disappeared during periods of high water, but helped hold water at a higher level in the upstream sawgrass marshes (Farnsworth 1998). After getting past this barrier, the troops entered a large sawgrass marsh, where they pulled the canoes for over a mile to a haulover path over the sand ridge separating the marsh from Lake Worth. The wetlands in the western and southern portions of the Natural Area were part of the sawgrass marsh, and the soldiers may have crossed through the site. Once they reached Lake Worth, the soldiers raided Seminole Indian villages along its shores, capturing Seminoles for forced relocation to Oklahoma, seizing guns, and destroying canoes.

The soldiers had followed an old Indian route for traveling between Jupiter Inlet and Lake Worth. When the last Seminole Indian war ended in 1859, pioneers began to use this route for coastal travel. Charles Pierce (1970) described his family's travel to Lake Worth by small boat via this route in 1873. They stopped at an Indian campsite at the rapids, endured a hurricane, and waited while his father found the right channel through the sawgrass to the haulover. Pierce and his family were among the earliest permanent settlers on the shores of Lake Worth. Pierce also provided the first direct reference to the site, describing the Indian campsite, the sawgrass marsh, and the scrub vegetation his father walked through to find the route to the haulover. The Indian campsite was located in the northwest corner of the Natural Area (Farnsworth 1998), but the sand spit it was located upon is believed to have been eliminated by the dredging and widening of the ICW.

By the late 1870s, enough homesteaders had settled on the shores of Lake Worth to make the inland boat route become well-used and marked. A tram with iron rails was constructed over the haulover to carry tomatoes and pineapples to boats for shipment northward. An 1884 U.S. Coastal and Geodetic Survey map (USCGS 1884) shows the boat route clearly. It roughly followed the present course of the ICW southward from the Jupiter Inlet, skirting the western edge of the Natural Area. South of the site, the boat route turned to the southwest and then paralleled the route of the ICW at a distance of 0.5 miles to the west, eventually turning back to the east to connect to the ICW at the haulover.

The first major human impact in vicinity of the Natural Area was the establishment of a county road in 1885. This north-south 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). The purpose of this road was to allow people and goods being carried by small boats to avoid having to make an often-rough ocean passage between the Jupiter and Lake Worth Inlets. Passengers were carried by hack coaches, and freight was hauled by wagons pulled by oxen known as "bull trains". The county road ran through the eastern portion of the FCT project tract.

In 1888, construction began on the Jupiter and Lake Worth Railway on top of the county roadbed. This 3-foot-wide, narrow-gauge railroad was dubbed the Celestial Railroad because it ran from Jupiter to Juno, with fictional stops at Mars and Venus. 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. In 1889, Juno became the county seat of Dade County, which at that time included all of southeastern Florida. The Town of Venus was platted in 1893 on the southern half of the FCT project tract, but none of the lots were sold and the only resident was J.B. Wells, the owner (Corbett 1993). Small farms on which pineapples and winter vegetables were grown were common along the Celestial Railway right-of way, and it is possible that parts of the project site were farmed. Corbett (1993) indicated that a Celestial Railroad stop and a pineapple farm may have been located just north of the site.

The Celestial Railway ceased operation in 1895, as result of the 1894 construction of Henry Flagler's Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railroad (the present-day Florida East Coast Railroad) 1.5 miles 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 bed back to a public road in 1897. The railroad ties were left to rot and the steel rails were removed in the mid-1930s (Corbett 1993). County staff found an old lighter pine railroad tie from the Celestial Railroad in 1998 during exotic vegetation removal activities, and donated it to the Town of Juno Beach. Pineapple growing along the railroad bed continued for some time after the railroad's demise, but it slowly dwindled away, receiving its final death blow in the 1930s from Cuban competition and fungal diseases. Juno, the source of the name of both Juno Beach and the Natural Area, went into a severe decline when the Celestial Railroad ceased operations and was abandoned when the Dade County seat was moved to Miami in 1899. The buildings in Juno burned down in a fire shortly thereafter (Corbett 1993).

Private and government engineers also visited this area in the 1880s to determine the feasibility of an inland transportation canal along the Atlantic coast. James E. Kreamer, who was employed by the Lake Okeechobee Land Company, noted that the water level in the sawgrass marshes was eight feet above sea level (Barbour 1964). Kreamer may have incorrectly estimated the water level of the marshes, since soil data, topographical maps, and vegetation indicate an average water level in the marshes of five feet. Even though the canal was determined to be feasible, the federal government declined to appropriate funds for the construction of the canal, citing the then-minimal population of south Florida. The State offered thousands of acres of free swamp lands for each mile of canal constructed, inducing the Florida East Coast Canal Company to begin constructing the canal southward from Sand Point (present-day Titusville).

Design dimensions for this canal were 50 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Dredging began at the mouth of Lake Worth Creek in 1892, with the dredge moving up the channel of the creek at a rate of 75 to 100 feet a day (Corbett 1993). The dredged spoil was piled on both sides of the canal. The dredge slowed down once it hit the rapids and left the channel of the creek. From there, it had to cut a straight line through the sawgrass marshes of the Natural Area, which were much higher in elevation. By 1896, the dredge had almost reached the haulover when the dredging ceased. Henry Flagler, who had gained control of the canal company, decided that a completed canal would benefit his Palm Beach hotels. The canal company, using a bigger dredge and new funding from Flagler, cut through the haulover ridge and entered Lake Worth in 1898 (Corbett 1993).

The dredging of a channel through the "rapids" and later through the haulover ridge eliminated the barriers that held water in the huge sawgrass marshes. In many areas, water levels fell to the level of Lake Worth and the Jupiter Inlet, which average 1.3 feet above sea level. A delta formed where the East Coast Canal entered Lake Worth from the silt deposited by the water flow. It appears that the marshes in the Juno Dunes Natural Area were not heavily impacted by the canal's drainage. The dredge spoil piled along the canal banks apparently acted as a berm to block surface water flow into the canal. The canal also silted up in spots with sandbars that restricted water outflows. The drained portions of the sawgrass marsh west of the ICW exposed muck soils that were considered ideal for farming, and the farming settlement of Prosperity came into existence here in the 1910s.

In 1916, the land lying 1,800 feet south of Donald Ross Road and one-half mile west of the Atlantic Ocean was platted as the New Palm Beach Heights subdivision by C.H. Nelson, Jr. This subdivision forms part of the eastern border of the Natural Area (Figure 2). No houses were built in the platted area until the 1950s, although some tourist cottages and motels were built near the ocean in the 1940s. Donald Ross Road and County Road AIA were later built on streets platted as part of this subdivision. The westernmost street (Poinciana Avenue) and its associated lots in this subdivision were platted in a sawgrass marsh that has since been converted into a disturbed mangrove tidal swamp. Poinciana Street was never built and the westernmost lots are considered to be unbuildable because of wetland impacts. Disturbances associated with home building, lot filling, and clearing created the area of disturbed scrub (Figure 4) just west of this subdivision and south of Donald Ross Road.

The Florida land boom in the mid-1920s and the widespread use of automobiles caused a surge in road construction. The former Celestial Railroad roadbed was the only road in the vicinity of the Natural Area until the original U.S. Highway 1 was built in 1927 along the top of the oceanfront dune. This road was built just east of the former Celestial railroad bed in the southern half of the FCT project tract. The road left the railroad where the railroad bed diverged westward away from the coast in the northern portion of the tract. The original U.S. 1 is known today as County Road A1A. It was the only paved road in the vicinity of the Natural Area until the 1950s. The remaining portions of the old Celestial Railroad roadbed probably were used as a sand road until the 1950s, when present-day U.S. Highway 1 was built. The old leveled grade of this railway still exists in the northeast corner of the Natural Area, west of A1A. Monet Road, which lies two miles south of the Natural Area, was extended east in 1928 to meet the new U.S. 1, with a bridge being built across the East Coast CanaI. The road that would become Ellison Wilson Road was also built at this time, extending northward one mile from Monet Road to Juno Road, where it ended one mile south of the Natural Area. It was named after Ellison Wilson, a local resident who lost his life in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II (Corbett 1993).

The East Coast Canal had silted up from bank erosion in many places by the 1920s and was partially blocked by fallen tree snags. It was being used primarily by small pleasure boats, generating minimal tolls (Gooding 1990). The canal company went bankrupt and was bought in 1925 by Harry Kelsey, who planned to improve it to handle large freight barges. A devastating hurricane struck Miami in 1926, ending the land boom and ruining Kelsey's finances. The Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) was established in 1927 to buy the canal, and the canal was acquired in 1928. The canal was designated a federal project in 1929 and was incorporated into the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The federal government removed the snags and restored the canal to its original five foot depth. FIND either obtained the title or spoil disposal easements over the land next to the ICW south of Donald Ross Road and west of the Natural Area. Dredged spoil material was placed primarily in existing wetlands on these lands when the ICW was widened by dredging to a width of 100 feet and a depth of 8 feet in 1932 (Corbett 1993). Some of this spoil filled in areas that were previously wetlands on the western edge of the site just south of Rolling Green Road (Figure 4). The spoil that was generated from the border of the Natural Area north of Donald Ross Road was placed in wetlands west of the ICW. The 1932 dredging helped to further isolate the Natural Area wetlands from surface drainage by filling in many of the connecting wetlands to the ICW.

Construction began on the Seminole Golf Club in 1929 (Corbett 1993). This private golf club is located diagonally across from the southeast corner of the Natural Area between County Road A1A and U.S. 1 and the Atlantic Ocean. Seminole Golf Club still owns a narrow 11.57 acre strip of land lying immediately south of the Natural Area that it uses as a wellfield. A 1929 photograph shows a water tank located just west of County Road A1A (Corbett 1993). A 1940 U.S. Department of the Interior (USDI) aerial photograph of Juno Dunes shows a pumphouse associated with four 4-inch, 180-foot deep wells present just west of Ellison Wilson Road at the southwest corner of the Natural Area on land then owned by the golf club. A 10-inch iron water line was installed just south of the Natural Area border to connect the wells to the water tank. This line is visible today at one location because of erosion associated with a nearby sand removal pit. The pumphouse, wells, water line, and water tank were constructed in 1929. The current wellfield was not established until much later. In 1933, Oscar and Hulda Erikson began building tourist cottages on both sides of A1A just south of the FCT project tract. These cottages were known as the Juno Beach Cottages. In a 1930s photograph, Australian pines are visible growing next to the cottages. The cottages may have been the original source of the Australian pines found on the FCT project tract, as well as the source of the large African bowstring hemp colony present on the southern border of the site.

There may have been some limited agricultural activities on the County-owned tract north of Donald Ross Road and west of U.S. 1 in the 1920s or 1930s. The 1940 aerial photograph shows a small rectangular clearing and a larger, more irregular clearing on a low ridge between several small depression marshes in the center of the tract. These cleared areas may have been used to grow pineapples or other vegetables. By 1953, aerial photographs show the clearing being recolonized by scrub vegetation (USDI 1953). Currently, these formerly-cleared areas are classified as scrub, although the scrub vegetation on them is shorter and sparser than that found on undisturbed scrub areas.

World War II resulted in a spurt of development around the Natural Area. Although initial development around the site centered on tourist cottages and motels, a few new residential subdivisions began to emerge. Portions of the New Palm Beach Heights subdivision were replatted as various Surfside Park plats in 1940, 1945, and 1950, with homes being built at a later date. In 1947, James Watson started a rental trailer park, which later became the Ocean Terrace Motel, on land a short distance north of the FCT project tract. Portions of the sand dune in the property between the project site and Watson's property were excavated at approximately the same time, and may have been used to fill the coastal swale on Watson's property. The small area of disturbed scrub along the northern border of the FCT project site was created by this excavation (Figure 4). In 1946, Bessemer Properties bought a large tract of land that encompassed most of the land between the New Palm Beach Heights plat and Seminole Golf Club that lay east of County Road AIA. Bessemer Properties filed the Plat of Juno Beach in 1948, which consisted of large acreage lots. This developer dredged a large coastal marsh to create Pelican Lake and began constructing the Juno Beach Fishing Pier in 1949 (Corbett 1993).

In the late 1940's, the Rolling Green Corporation, controlled by Walter Travers, owned the southern 80 acres of the Natural Area and adjacent land fronting on the ICW. The developer made several attempts to build an access road from U.S. 1 to the ICW before settling on the eventual route of Rolling Green Road. The interconnected sawgrass marshes and scrub ridges were barriers to road establishment. The abandoned road routes south of Rolling Green Road are still visible as linear sandy cuts through the scrub, and as a grassy causeway through the middle of a small depression marsh. Additional clearings were made at about this time in the scrub ridges just north of Rolling Green Road and at the southwest corner of the intersection of present-day U.S. 1 and Rolling Green Road. The cleared area at the southwest corner of the intersection of U.S. 1 and Rolling Green Road is still mostly vegetated by weedy vegetation and is classified as disturbed scrub (Figure 4). In 1951, Rolling Green Corporation sold Bessemer Properties a 200 by 200 foot tract in the southwest corner of the Natural Area for a water well and pump location, and gave them an easement to use Rolling Green Road to run water lines to Bessemer's development. The well was apparently never installed and the land reverted back to Rolling Green Corporation or its successor. Construction was slow on Rolling Green's lots along the ICW. Only one home had been built by 1953, although additional homes were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Belvedere Development, which was controlled by John D. MacArthur, acquired Rolling Green's ownership in the Natural Area in the late 1960s.

The residents of the Juno Beach area formed the Juno Beach Association in 1948 and the Town of Juno Beach became incorporated in 1953. The new town included most of the eastern portion of the Natural Area that was north of Donald Ross Road. Although the motel owners and Bessemer Properties wanted a location name for marketing purposes, the main impetus for incorporation was the need to organize for protection against increased beach erosion, which was blamed on the dredging of the Jupiter Inlet in the early 1950s (Corbett 1993). The 1950s were a period of mostly residential development in Juno Beach on the lands south of Donald Ross Road that lay between the Natural Area and County Road A1A.

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, splitting the northern portion of the Natural Area and forming the eastern border of part of the southern portion of the site. The two areas of disturbed scrub adjacent to U.S. 1 in the FCT project site (Figure 4) were probably created at this time and may have been used as construction staging areas. Donald Ross Road was also being built as a two-lane road at the same time; it extended from County Road A1A to the Florida's Turnpike. Ellison Wilson Road was extended northward along the western border of the Natural Area to Donald Ross Road in this time period.

In the late 1950s, Jay and Gail Nelson built a home on approximately one acre in the northwest portion of the Natural Area that fronted on the ICW and was just north of the FIND lease parcel. This parcel was reached by a sand road in a 66-foot access easement extending southward almost one-half mile from Marcinski Road. The Nelsons cleared their land, and planted a row of ficus trees and other exotic shrubs. They cleared the understory vegetation from the land just north of their house, presumably to reduce the risk of wildfires. The Nelsons sold their land to Juno Associates in 1974, and the house was abandoned and later burned in a fire set by vagrants. The concrete block walls of the house still stand today, along with remnants of the ficus trees and shrubs, and the old power line poles. The house site and the area with the formerly-cleared understory are classified as disturbed scrubby flatwoods (Figure 4).

1962 was a year that had far-reaching impacts to the Natural Area, beginning with a huge wildfire in March. Wildfires in the Juno Dunes Natural Area were common up to the 1960s, partly because of the large areas of sawgrass marsh. Lightning strikes would set the highly flammable sawgrass on fire. Fanned by southwest winds, the fire would spread into the scrub and burn all the way to the coastal strand at the edge of the ocean. These frequent fires were largely responsible for the lack of sand pines, the dwarfed nature of the scrub oaks, and the poor development of maritime hammock. Historic aerial photographs (USDI 1940, 1953) show that very little maritime hammock was present prior to the 1950s. Fire frequency has decreased as road construction created artificial firebreaks, and as the sawgrass has been replaced by mangroves as a result of mosquito-ditching of the marshes. The 1962 wildfire consumed four square miles of scrub, including nearly the entire Natural Area. The wildfire burned almost all the way to the ocean, and was stopped only by a combination of a wind shift and backfires set by local fire departments (Corbett 1993).

After the 1962 wildfire and a long spring drought, there was reportedly a major increase in mosquito reproduction when the sawgrass marshes refilled with water. Most of the mosquito predators could have died from adverse conditions, allowing mosquito populations to explode. The state health department was funding mosquito control programs at that time, and in response to local residents' complaints, provided funding to the County's mosquito control department to dig ditches in the Natural Area's wetlands. The ditches were dug in a 120 by 120 foot square grid pattern, with a width of ten feet and a depth of one foot below the 1.3-foot average tide level. The ditches were dug by hand in the few existing mangrove swamps areas, and by draglines traveling over movable wooden pads in the sawgrass marshes, which formed the vast majority of the site's wetlands (Steiner 1998). A larger flushing channel was dug from the ICW eastward to Ellison Wilson Road where it crossed the road under a bridge to drain the wetlands east of the road and south of Donald Ross Road. Smaller culverts were placed under Donald Ross Road to connect smaller areas of wetlands north of the road to those draining through the channel under Ellison Wilson Road. The majority of the wetlands north of Donald Ross Road were drained by a flushing channel just north of the Donald Ross Road bridge over the ICW. The wetlands south of Rolling Green Road were not mosquito-ditched.

The mosquito-ditching program relied on the theory that the ditches would allow mosquito predators to move into the wetlands and eat the mosquito larvae before they matured (Steiner 1998). This theory worked well in the lower elevation areas dominated by mangroves, but ended up draining the higher elevation freshwater marshes. The low berms that separated the sawgrass marshes from the ICW were breached, and the water levels fell from a wet season high of five feet to the average tidal elevation of 1.3 feet above sea level. In some cases, ditches were dug through pine flatwoods and scrub to connect isolated wetlands. The lowering of the water levels caused a shift in plant communities throughout the Natural Area as plants characteristic of better-drained areas moved into areas formerly occupied by plants which could tolerate flooding. A wide zone of bare white sand appeared around the edge of drained wetlands and was gradually colonized by scrub and pine flatwoods species. These white sand ecotones were widely used as access roads, first for mosquito-ditching equipment and workers, and later, for off-road vehicles (ORVs) and illegal dumpers. The vehicular activities retarded the revegetation of these bare zones, and it wasn't until the late 1980s that they became overgrown to the point that they prevented vehicular access. Most of the pine flatwoods plant communities found on the Natural Area today occupy areas that appeared to be wet prairies prior to mosquito ditching (USDI 1940, 1953). Today, mature cabbage palms mark where the historic boundary between wetland and upland ecosystems once existed.

The sawgrass marshes did not change into mangrove swamps quickly. Palm Beach County Property Appraiser aerial photographs from 1965, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1984, and 1989 show that at first the sawgrass remained in the squares between the ditches, while the ditches widened and the muck soil slumped into the ditch or oxidized away. By 1970, transitional native species such as wax myrtle, myrsine, and cabbage palm, and exotic species like Brazilian pepper and melaleuca had begun to colonize the sawgrass squares. Mangroves became visible in the squares by 1977, and rapidly expanded to their present extent by 1989. By 1989, mangrove species dominated the lower elevation wetlands. In higher elevation wetlands, white mangroves were found only in ditches, and the squares remained a mixture of native transitional and exotic vegetation, with remnant patches of sawgrass. Australian pines became quickly established on sandy spoil piles created by the mosquito ditching and are still present today.

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway was also dredged to 125 feet wide and 10 feet deep in 1962. Dredge spoil was pumped into adjacent wetlands on the FIND lease parcel, and other FIND-owned lands west of the Natural Area and south of Donald Ross Road, including most of present-day Bert Winters County Park. In most spoil deposition areas, a low berm was pushed up along the edge of the ICW easement to prevent dredged materials from flowing back into the ICW, and the dredge pipe outfall placed in the center of the area to be filled. As the spoil material was pumped out, a low conical mound was formed under the outfall pipe. Pumping ceased whenever the depression was filled with spoil, or when dredging was completed for that section of the ICW, and it was time to move the dredge to a new section. Dredge spoil sometimes flowed outside the targeted wetland into the adjacent upland habitat. The spoil was rarely thick enough to kill the existing woody vegetation, but it would cover the understory vegetation, which would then be replaced by species characteristic of disturbed areas. This happened on the north and south sides of the FIND lease parcel spoil piles. These two piles are visible on the 1965 Property Appraiser's aerial, and are shown on Figure 4. These spoil piles were quickly colonized by Australian pines. Currently, about half of these Australian pines have died and are being replaced by a mixture of Brazilian pepper, cabbage palm, strangler fig and cocoplum.

In the early 1960s, the Juno Beach Condo and Floridian mobile home parks were developed west of U.S. 1 along the northern border of the Natural Area. At about the same time, construction began on the Juno Isles development south of the site. The sawgrass marshes in this project were dredged and filled, and the scrub ridges leveled, to create a development where some of the home were on canals with direct access to the ICW. These canals pulled down the ground water levels and allowed salt water to move in from the ICW and were blamed for salt water intrusion into nearby wellfields (Corbett 1993). A dam was eventually built just east of Ellison Wilson Road to separate the fresh water from the brackish ICW, with an associated boat lift to move boats across the dam. The 1965 Property Appraiser's aerial photograph also shows a small area of scrub being cleared in the southwest corner of the Natural Area. Most of this area has regenerated as low sparse scrub, but a portion with significant amounts of Brazilian pepper and other exotic plants next to Ellison Wilson Road is classified as disturbed scrub (Figure 4).

After 1965, additional mosquito control activities were carried out on the Natural Area. The isolated wetlands in the northern part of the site either had sump holes dug in them, or in the case of the larger wetlands, linear ditches were dug across the wetland. Since these ditches and sump holes did not connect to the ICW or a drainage system, they did not lower the water levels, but the spoil piles have been colonized by melaleuca or transitional native species, disrupting the historic appearance of these wetlands. The ditches and sump holes were dug to provide a deep water refuge for mosquito predators to survive the dry season. In the southeastern portion of the Natural Area, a new ditch was dug through a low ridge between two wetlands, in order to provide for more direct and effective drainage of the wetland to the south. The additional ditches and sump holes are visible on the 1970 Property Appraiser's aerial photograph.

Juno Beach acquired Bessemer Properties' water system in 1959. The Town sold bonds in 1965 to provide the funds to add additional wells and storage capacity and to extend water lines. The improved water supply system and the passage of the 1963 Condominium Act set the stage for the condominium phase of the Town's development. The Greenbriar was the first condominium to be built in 1966 (Corbett 1993), and was soon followed by many others, most of which were built on the large lots platted by Bessemer Properties. In 1971, a drought caused salt water intrusion into the Town's water system. The Seminole Golf Club installed the three wells on its currently-owned property just south of the Natural Area in 1979 and connected them to their existing water line, presumably because of the need to find additional water supplies. These shallow wells are 6 inches in diameter, 45 feet deep, and have 4-inch output lines and maintain a water pressure of 120 pounds per square inch. The wells are located at the edge of wetlands that extend into the Natural Area. One of the four 1929 golf course wells located west of Ellison Wilson Road was shut down in 1976 because of salt water intrusion. Another well was shut down for the same reason in the late 1980s and the remaining two wells were shut down in the early l990s.

Prior to the 1970s, Juno Beach did not have a sewer system. Home owners used septic tanks and the low-rise condominiums used package plants. The high-rise condominiums proposed by Ocean View Enterprises in the early 1970s required that a sewer system be built. Ocean View built a sewer plant in an inset in the southeast corner of the Natural Area that is presently the Town public works compound and former police shooting range. The Town was given the sewer plant with 60% of the capacity reserved for Ocean View's condominium developments. The plant is visible and completed in the 1973 Property Appraiser's aerial photograph. It was constructed on a rectangular parcel north of Rolling Green Road that consisted of portions of three wetlands with two scrub ridges between them. The plant consisted of two large percolation ponds with a small treatment plant between them. Although the wetlands may have been filled in somewhat, it appears that the scrub ridges were removed and used to form a perimeter berm and to fill in the remainder of a wetland on the western border of the sewer plant. This wetland was in the Natural Area and is classified today as disturbed pine flatwoods (Figure 4).

Other disturbances are also visible in the 1973 Property Appraiser's aerial photograph, but their relationship to the sewer plant construction is uncertain. A borrow pit was excavated and an area of disturbed scrub was created in the Natural Area just south of Rolling Green Road. Fill was pushed into the wetland west of Rolling Green Road where the road takes a short northward turn just west of U.S. 1. Another fill removal area was excavated just south of the southwest corner of the Natural Area on the land owned by Seminole Golf Club that was just east of Ellison Wilson Road. The Rolling Green borrow pit has been recolonized by willows and other wetland vegetation, but the Rolling Green Road fill area has been colonized by Brazilian pepper (Figure 4). In the northern portion of the Natural Area, the 1973 aerial shows a series of cuts in the vegetation in the vicinity of County Road A1A and U.S. 1 that run parallel to these roads. These cuts appear to be for survey purposes to measure elevations, but may have contributed to the invasion of Brazilian pepper into the disturbed maritime hammock.

In 1974, a number of parcels of land totaling approximately 190 acres and including the majority of the County-owned environmentally sensitive lands and the FCT project site, were joined together and placed under the control of Juno Associates, Ltd. A number of ORV trails and cleared sand roads are visible in a 1977 aerial photograph of the northern part of the Natural Area (Palm Beach County Property Appraiser 1977) and may be associated with surveying activities by Juno Associates. The same photograph also shows that there was another wildfire in portions of the Natural Area north of Donald Ross Road a year or two earlier, which may have encouraged the creation of ORV trails. The 1977 aerial photograph also show the uplands had been cleared in what would become the Juno Beach RV Park north of the Natural Area, the clearing and leveling of the Bert Winters County Park site west of the Natural Area, and the clearing of the Seminole Plaza shopping center site east of the Town sewer plant. The remnant of a wetland in the Seminole Plaza site has been filled and fill was stockpiled on top of it. Also in 1977, the County opened Juno Beach Park just north of Watson's Ocean Terrace Motel.

In 1978, the Juno Associates lands were approved by the Town for 1,950 housing units for the proposed Sea Trace Planned Unit Development. At the same time, Juno Associates granted to the Loxahatchee River Environmental Control District (ENCON) a 50 by 30 foot parcel just west of U.S. 1 for a sewer lift station to serve the proposed development. The lift station site was on a small ridge which was leveled in 1978. Sand from this ridge was pushed outward into the Natural Area, creating a large area of disturbed scrub (Figure 4). In 1979, ENCON agreed to handle Juno Beach's sewage. By 1981, Bert Winters County Park was under construction west of the Natural Area, and the ENCON lift station west of U.S. 1 had been constructed. ENCON also built another lift station at the southeast corner of the Rolling Green Road sewer plant in 1983. The sewer plant was phased out and a aeration tank associated with it was demolished. The Town converted the plant site to a public works compound and used one of the settling ponds and its perimeter berm as a shooting range.

In 1979 and 1980, the County purchased Erikson's Juno Beach Cottages, another undeveloped tract of land, and the Juno by the Sea Motel for what would become Loggerhead County Park. The park was opened in 1987. The MarineLife Center of Juno Beach is located in Loggerhead Park in portions of the old Juno by the Sea Motel. In 1981, the bridge over the main tidal flushing channel on Ellison Wilson Road was replaced by a fill embankment with two 48-inch culverts. The Juno Beach RV Park was also developed in the early 1980s. During development of the RV Park, the two large wetlands on the site were dredged and filled and reduced to small ponds. One of these wetlands had extended into the Natural Area. The RV park drains into these ponds, but the ponds have no outfall. During heavy rain events, these ponds overflow and the excess water flowed or has been pumped into wetlands on the Natural Area. The County has agreed to allow the RV park to bury an outfall pipe to the ICW under the perimeter firebreak along the northern edge of the site, but construction of the outfall pipe has been stalled by a dispute over who should be assessed to cover the costs of construction.

The year 1984 saw a surge in construction in the vicinity of the Natural Area. The huge Bluffs development began clearing the undeveloped land west of the RV park that lay between Marcinski Road and the northern border of the Natural Area. The Sea Oats Condominium and the Loggerhead Plaza shopping center also began construction in the northwest corner of Donald Ross Road and U.S. 1 at this time. The large wetland that extended from the Natural Area into the Sea Oats site was bermed off, and dredged and filled. Several wetland lots on the western edge of the New Palm Beach Heights subdivision were filled and built upon in 1984, but the subsequent adoption of wetland preservation regulations prevented any more filling or construction. The Seminole Plaza shopping center east of the Town's public work compound was built by 1987, but the center experienced problems in finding tenants and remained mostly empty for a long time. Construction of the Bluffs was completed in 1987, and Sea Oats was built out in 1988. The scrub portions of the Parker tract, which lies west of U.S. 1 and south of Donald Ross Road, was cleared in 1988, but only the surface vegetation was removed. The native vegetation regrew from the roots and forms a low sparse scrub today. The Plaza La Mer shopping center was built in 1989, south of Loggerhead Plaza, and has also experienced difficulties in attracting and holding tenants.

Development activity moved north of the Natural Area in the early 1990s. The Town of Jupiter, which was now the water supplier for Juno Beach, built a water storage tank on the small parcel just west of Loggerhead Plaza and just south of the Natural Area. This tank was accessed by a 25-foot-wide utility and access easement on the edge of the Natural Area. The remaining buildings at the Ocean Terrace Motel were bulldozed in 1992, and construction started on the Seaview at Juno Beach development in 1993. In November 1992, Palm Beach County purchased a 148-acre portion of the Sea Trace proposed development lying west of U.S. Highway 1 from Juno Associates, Ltd. for $10,300,000. This parcel became the first tract in the Juno Dunes Natural Area. The sales contract required the cleanup of an extensive area of concrete rubble and other dumping located just south of the Juno Beach Condo mobile home park and west of U.S. 1. This cleanup area is classified as disturbed scrub in Figure 4.

In 1993, the County's proposal for the 359-acre Juno Hills Conservation and Recreational Lands (CARL) project received enough votes to be accepted for ranking. This followed unsuccessful CARL project proposals by the County for 623 acres in 1991 and 251 acres in 1992. The project was ranked 36th on the 1994 CARL Priority List and 26th on the 1995 CARL Bargain/Shared Project List. Also in 1993, Juno Associates signed a contract to sell the remaining 42-acre portion of the Sea Trace proposed development lying east of U.S. Highway 1 for the Hamilton by the Sea development. In 1994, Hamilton by the Sea built the existing parking lot in the northeast corner of this tract and moved a mobile home onto the site to serve as a sales office. A sand road was cleared from U.S. 1 to the sales office to provide water and sewer service. Approximately ten gopher tortoises burrows were excavated and three tortoises were relocated from the site in July 1994, but otherwise the project site was not altered. Hamilton by the Sea was not successful in pre-selling its dwelling units, and was unable to obtain financing to purchase the site from Juno Associates, Ltd. The sales office was removed in 1995 and maintenance of the parking lot ceased. In 1995, representatives of Juno Associates, Ltd. approached the County about a possible sale of this tract to the County. In August 1995, the County and the Town submitted a successful joint application for matching funds for purchase of the Juno Hills Oceanfront project site to the Florida Communities Trust‘s Preservation 2000 Program. The Hamilton by the Sea partners fought attempts to void their purchase contract for non-performance, but the courts gave clear title to the property back to Juno Associates, Ltd. in late 1996. In February 1997, the County and the Town purchased the former Hamilton by the Sea site from Juno Associates, Ltd. for $15,800,000 as the Juno Hills Oceanfront FCT project. Matching funds of $7,453,854 were provided by FCT for this project.

In September 1994, the County purchased another 3.5 acres of the Natural Area from the Resolution Trust Corporation for $320,000. This tract was located just west of U.S. 1 and south of the New Palm Beach Heights subdivision. In December 1995, the County purchased 334 acres of the Juno Hills CARL project from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for $14,975,430. Extensive site cleanup occurred prior to closing along some of the old sand ecotone roads that connected to Donald Ross or Ellison Wilson roads. The cleanup removed junk cars, concrete culverts, tires, old appliances, construction debris, and other illegally dumped debris.

The oceanfront portions of the site have been affected by erosion of the beach dune habitat. This erosion became severe in 1995 after several strong storms from the northeast eroded the beach back to the base of the dune. In addition to natural processes such as northeaster storms in the winter and hurricanes in the summer, the beach dune habitat has been eroding from the effects of dredging the Jupiter Inlet several miles north of the site, along with the effects caused by the construction of protective jetties at the inlet. The inlet and jetties resulted in the alteration of the natural replenishment of sand by a long shore drift process. The 1893 plat of Venus (Wells 1893) shows that there was 380 feet of land between the county road and the high tide line at a point just north of Loggerhead County Park. By 1995, less than 200 feet remained, which meant at least 180 feet had eroded away. In 1996, additional sand was placed on the beach as part of a beach restoration project. Some of this sand was dredged from the ICW and pumped to the beach via a temporary pipeline.

In 1996, the County purchased the 2-acre Fisher parcel in the Juno Hills CARL project for $165,000. This parcel is located in the northeast corner of Ellison Wilson and Rolling Green roads. A management burn was conducted on the portion of the Natural Area just south of the Juno Beach RV Park, but was only partially successful due to adverse weather conditions. Also in 1996, most of the property north of the Juno Hills FCT project tract was cleared and leveled for the Ocean Royale condominium, and a parking lot and sales office constructed next to State Road A1A. The cleared area was not stabilized with vegetation, and blowing sand accumulated in small drifts along the northern border of the FCT project tract.

The widening of Donald Ross Road to a six-laned highway began in 1997. A new, higher bridge across the ICW is part of this road project. Approximately 70 trees, mostly cabbage palms, but including scrub oaks, slash pines, redbay, cocoplum and saw palmetto, were relocated into the disturbed pine flatwood (filled wetland) west of the Town public works compound. These trees were moved to meet the County's vegetation preservation requirements for the road right-of-way. The trees were located next to similar existing native vegetation. Minimum required survival rates of 80% were achieved. As part of the road widening work, twin culverts under Donald Ross Road at Ellison Wilson Road were removed to eliminate the drainage of wetlands north of the road. A mosquito ditch that ran parallel and just south of Donald Ross Road was filled, reducing the drainage of adjacent wetland areas. The right-of-way for the road widening was donated by the MacArthur Foundation, which retained these lands when they sold the rest of the land for the Natural Area. The Palm Beach County Engineering Department has agreed to allow unused portions of the right-of-way to be managed as part of the Natural Area.

The 334-acre MacArthur tract was resold to the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund in March 1997 to obtain CARL matching funds of $7,475,427. The resale of the Fisher tract for $82,500 to the Board of Trustees was completed in December 1998. A 50-year management lease to the County for the MacArthur tract was executed on September 15, 1997 (Appendix G) and amended to include the Fisher tract in June 1999. A 25-year management lease to the County for the 30-acre FIND parcel was executed on August 19, 1997 (Appendix H). Construction of a 12-story condominium building began at the Ocean Royale site in 1998. A second 12-story condominium building began construction at this site in 1999. In March 1999, the MacArthur Foundation gave the County a quit-claim deed for approximately 2.7 acres of uplands within the ICW right-of-way that are adjacent to the northern portion of the Natural Area. In August 1999, the County purchased the 3.44 acre Parker tract for $320,000. This tract is located west of U.S. Highway 1 and south of the Resolution Trust Corporation tract.

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

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