Fort Center: 2,000 years of earthworks on Fisheating Creek (Glades County, c. 450 BCE to 1700 CE)
Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our readingOpen: not yet provenDisputed: argued, often by a hostile witness
Year: 1700 · Places: Florida
SUMMARYFort Center: 2,000 years of earthworks on Fisheating Creek (Glades County, c. 450 BCE to 1700 CE) [Connections: Miami & Lake Okeechobee, Nov 5, 2026]
RECORDFort Center lies a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee on Fisheating Creek; occupied about 450 BCE to about 1700 CE, within the Belle Glade culture area (from as early as 1000 BCE); earthwork mounds, linear embankments, circular ditches and an artificial pond over about a mile; the "Great Circle" ditch is about 365 m across, and LiDAR (Thompson and Pluckhahn) found four concentric ditches; William Sears read the pond as a mortuary site with a wooden platform holding bundled burials, about 150 individuals, which burned and fell into the pond around 500 CE; a carved wooden bird pulled from the pond in 1926 first drew archaeologists
DISPUTEDSears's claim of maize farming by 450 BCE (pollen found, no kernels or cobs; later reanalysis confirmed early maize pollen)
PATTERNThe ground around Moore Haven is one of the oldest engineered landscapes in the Southeast
LENS (WW9)Next door to Moore Haven, a 2,000-year-old earthwork city
OPENVisitor access (the site is in Fisheating Creek WMA); NRHP status not confirmed on this page
SOURCEFort Center (Wikipedia); primary: William H. Sears, Fort Center (University Press of Florida, 1994).