Apalachee Bay
[4] Most of the shoreline of Apalachee Bay is part of the Big Bend Coast, a drowned karst region, covered with salt marsh and mangrove forests.
[9] Sediment of Holocene origin is generally limited to salt marshes and the nearshore zone, and is redistributed by tidal action and storm events.
[10] The coast of Apalachee Bay is on the Gulf Coastal Lowlands of Florida, which has recently exposed ocean-smoothed terraces with Tertiary limestone at or just below the surface.
Tropical species may be killed by cold weather, or may migrate southward or to deeper water less subject to cooling in winter.
The close proximity of the Florida aquifer to the surface with only a shallow soil layer over the porous limestone bedrock means that groundwater can emerge in many locations.
The authors of that study estimated that the discharge from the identified inland sources is equivalent to that of one 1st-magnitude spring for every 2 miles (3.2 km) of coast.
[16] Many sites where people were present in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs have been found in the Big Bend region adjacent to Apalachee Bay, and particularly in sinkholes in the bed of the Aucilla River.
Some of these sites show evidence of the presence of people in the late Pleistocene, even before the appearance of the Clovis culture (see Page-Ladson).
[25] Ray Hole Spring (8TA171) is a site 19 miles (31 km) south of the Aucilla River in 35 feet (11 m) of water.
The hole appears to have been partially filled with debris since then, possibly as a result of turbulence from hurricanes that passed over Apalachee Bay.
[26] A piece of southern live oak wood was found on the margin of the sinkhole at the bottom of a crevice under a lens of oyster shells.
The wood was free of teredo worm damage, which indicates it was deposited in fresh water, likely in a hammock, and later covered by an oyster bed as the sea level rose.
Evidence of Paleo-Indian occupation near the present-day coast of Apalachee Bay has been found at Wakulla Springs and the Page-Ladson site.
Their own scouting and reports from natives convinced the Spanish that the land to the east and north of Apalachee was sparsely occupied and the few people who lived there were poor.
The Spanish were told that a village to the south called Aute had a lot of corn, beans, squash, and, because it was near the sea, fish, and would be friendly.
On reaching Aute the Spanish found it deserted and all the buildings burned, but crops in the fields were ready to be harvested.
Lacking both the needed materials and the knowledge of how to build ships, the expedition improvised, forging woodworking tools from such iron objects as they had.
The five rafts carrying 242 men sailed downriver for seven days before reaching the open water of Apalachee Bay.
Amacano people were living near the mouth of the Apalachicola River in 1637 when they guided Spanish ships to Apalachee Bay.
Ships sailed between there and St. Augustine, Havana, and a port called San Martin that was established in the early 1670s on the Suwannee River.
Chaccabi was on a small stream identified as "Rio Chachave" on Spanish maps, flowing into western Apalachee Bay, and probably was what is today known as Spring Creek.
After an enemy ship appeared off San Marcos in 1677, villages near Apalachee Bay were ordered to move inland.
