For me, there has always been something fascinating about northeastern beaches. For the most part, it is the rock formations at the shore that attracted me.
I remember a drive along the New Hampshire and Maine shores and marveling at the waves hitting the rocky shore. It’s a shame that this was long before my photography hobby started. Having lived in southeast Florida since the early 1970’s, this is something I no longer see.
However, the pandemic provided me with an opportunity to explore the state of Florida in search of interesting spots I didn’t know existed. This one blew me away.
I once saw some large rock formations along the coast of St.Augustine and, at the time, was sure this could not be found anywhere else in the state. Now I stand corrected.
It so happens that, just over an hour’s drive from where I live, practically in my own backyard, I had been missing out on one of the most dramatic shorelines in Florida, the rocky shores of Blowing Rocks Preserve. Like a tall limestone terrace, it commands the meeting of sand and sea. With sea caves and bluffs to explore during low tide, it stretches for more than a mile long along the coast of Jupiter Island.
Local residents preserved this area until 1969 when they turned it over to The Nature Conservancy. Today Blowing Rocks Preserve protects 73 acres of Jupiter Island. This includes tropical and oak hammocks as well as the beach dunes.
The park features a sea grape canopy boardwalk at its entrance as the aquamarine waters of the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the eroded limestone rocks invite you. There are places where you can peer out from between the sea grapes and look out over the dramatic coastline.
At low tide, you can walk sough along the beach around fallen rocks and in and out of the caves as the waves strike the stone. Some of the caves are tall enough to stand in. It’s a type of natural labyrinth with a stunning view of the sea. It is said that, on rough and stormy days, particularly in winter, waves burst through the caves and send “geysers” of water through the holes in the limestone as high as fifty feet in the air — hence the name “Blowing Rocks”.
This isn’t just any limestone. Blowing Rocks Preserve contains the largest Anastasia limestone outcropping on the U.S.’s east coast. A Florida state geologist described Anastasia limestone as a kind of “fossiliferous sandstone”, primarily composed of calcium carbonate from the remains of animals that lived and died here some 120,000 years ago.
Even more fascinating is that Blowing Rocks Preserve is the result of one of nature’s “happy accidents” — when part of Florida that is now Jupiter Island was a sand bar on the top of a reef that held above the ocean when much of the rest of Florida was inundated and drained as the seas rose and fell and rose and fell.
This is definitely one of Florida’s best-kept secrets. A place I did not want to write about for fear that it will become crowded.
No comments:
Post a Comment