06 Caldwall’s Store

This site is a county boat ramp that provides access to Black Creek.

Set out early, cool morning, with white frost, wind N. W. Saw many high bluffs, near 20 foot high, but poor and sandy; some have a cypress-swamp behind them, others are level with the adjacent pine-land, in which is plenty of rank grass knee-high on one or both sides of these bluffs frequently runs out a small spring: We called at the Store, (this was a fine warm day) above which, the land is still higher, and produces live-oak, red and purple-berried bay, alder, maple, chinquapins, elm, linden, water-oak, myrtle, dogwood, vaccinium, palmetto, hamamelis and cedar; here the creek divides into two branches nearly equal; we took the left-hand one, which had generally high banks on each side, raised by the floods 12 or more feet with white sand; in many places the level pine-lands come close to its banks; in others again, there is a pond or cypress-swamp just behind the bank, in which very large trees grow in the pine-lands; of shallow ponds, on the borders of which there is much green grass all the winter: We rowed up this branch, until the great trees, that had fallen across the creek, stopped our passage, and there the creeks were 4 or 5 foot deep and 10 yards broad, on a sandy bottom; we returned to the Store where we lodged, and before day it began to rain.

Warm rainy morning; it cleared up, and we set out up the north-branch, the banks of which were 12 or 13 foot high most of the way, more or less, in many places rocks under the surface 3 or 4 foot, reaching below the surface of the water to an unknown depth in some places; the first strata is sandy, then a gritty rock for a foot, then a softish rock full of sea-shells, of the cockle and perriwinkle kind, mixed close with broken or ground shells to a solid mass for two foot, more or less, then a deep mass of soft, in some places, hard rocks: We rowed up this branch until we were stopped by trees, as in the other, and here the creek was 10 yards broad and a fathom deep; we walked up it a good way farther, but found little alteration, except in its being fuller of old trees; the traders say, it heads in a great lake 5 miles long and 3 broad; there are some middling good cypress- swamps near its banks, the floods had been so high up this branch, as to flow over its banks, and the first rising of the pine-lands; they had not been quite so high in the other branch; near the Store was a deep gut with a middling stream of water, which headed about a quarter of a mile up in the pine-lands, and gushed out over the rocks, where it had worn a deep narrow gully 8 or 10 foot deep, the rocks reached to within 4 foot, more or less of the surface, and to an unknown depth, all of ground or broken sea-shells; in some places there is a strata of tenacious clay, either above, under, or without this shelly strata.

Set out from the Store down the river, near the mouth of which are some good cypress swamps, and up it generally very large ones; about 4 miles up, there is a very extensive one, reaching a mile and a half north-eastward, to a place called the Doctor’s lake, narrowing gradually to the mouth of the creek and upwards, till a pine-bluff interposes; opposite to this is another extensive swamp, upwards of 1000 acres; pretty near the mouth of the creek there are two small islands; a large point of land projects out from the main on the east side of the river opposite to the mouth of Doctor’s lake, which runs near south partly parallel with the river: We arrived this evening at Mr. Davis’s.

Coming Soon…