The Mound House is what I like to call a triple threat.

A nature preserve, a historic home, and an archaeological site where there's a mission to save thousands of ancient artifacts.

I dont know many artifact preservation centers that can say they are in a 1921 bathroom.

Even more amazing is that this old house survived Hurricane Ian I saw how that 2022 storm obliterated this island.

Yet the oldest structure on Fort Myers Beach stood its ground.

The secret?

The engineering of the Calusa people.

They lived on this very sit more than a thousand years ago.

Their entire lifestyle was, was more conducive, and more adaptable to this landscape, and to the climate impacts.

Just by the fact of them not living right on the Gulf of Mexico I think they're smarter than us.

As storms strengthen and oceans rise, what can we learn from the people who lived here before about how to stay in the places we love?

I start my exploration of the Calusa world on Estero Bay.

We are in the heartland of what was once the Calusa kingdom.

From a plastic kayak with condo towers in view, it can be hard to wrap your hea around the fact that the Calusa paddled these waterway more than a thousand years ago.

But they weren't the first ones here.

People are in Florida at least 14,500 years ago, long before what we call, archaeologically, the antecedent or the ancestors of the Calusa.

So beginning around 5,000 years ago, sea levels start to stabilize and we start to see peopl living on our current coastline in larger number and in more permanent villages.

The Calusa take that to another level.

Their sites are bordering the estuaries, because that's where the resources are.

And it makes perfect sense that the Calusa would then focus their sights on the estuary rather than what we do today, which is focus our houses on the view to the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida archaeologist Theresa Schober is one of our guides to the indigenous people who ruled South Florida from Lee County.

It didn't take long for the estuary to show us why the Calusa thrived here.

So each each of the bays seem to their own sort of community.

Oh, mullet!

Did you see the mullet jump?

The Calusa are unique among ancient civilizations because they relied on fishing rather than farming.

We paddled toward the Mound House site on Fort Myers Beach.

The physical proo of their resilient engineering.

Imagine a time when it was the only elevated ground on this side.

You would know if you were paddling here.

You would see it because it would rise above the mangroves on your trip down Fort Myers Bea The early 20th century home is built on top of a Calusa shell mound, a reminder that history can endure.

We docked the kayaks and moved to higher ground.

So how was this site used by the Calusa?

At earlier times, people are living on the landsca in smaller communities, and their sites like this are accumulating from the debris people leave behind.

The Calusa produced midden materials from their daily lives and that ultimately generated the kinds of sites that were on.

At a later period in time, true for this site, bu also for a number of sites in the area, the Calusa actively start building their sites taller.

Taller shell mounds reflected power and offered protection from storms and rising water.

The Mound House site may have housed 100 or so Calusa people.

Mound Key, the Calusa capital, is a few miles southeast.

More than a thousand people may have lived there.

And at their height, the Calusa may have reached 20,000 throughout Southwest Florida.

How many sites are there in Southwest Florida that are archaeologically significant to the Calusa?

Well, there's, there's hundreds if not thousands of archaeological sites.

Not all of them have been found.

Many have been destroyed by development, including parts of the Mound House settlement.

Fort Myers Beach residents knew the rest of the site was worth saving.

The town bought the property and in 2000 opened it to the public.

Theresa Schober oversaw early excavations and became the Mound House director.

What makes the Mound House special?

There's lots of things that make the Mound House special.

The Calusa had everywhere to choose from to live, and they picked here.

So it's not a surpris that the earliest homesteaders that came to Fort Myers Beach also selected here.

That the earliest house in Fort Beach was built here, that you can come to one place and see that long history is really amazing.

Theresa was instrumental in developing a fascinating exhibit.

It was created after the tow removed a pool that a previous owner had built into the mound.

I met with Mound House archaeologist, Breanna Vaccaro, to visit the special exhibit.

We are going to go see the mound of the Mound House.

Yes, exactly.

Right in here.

The underground space was being after flooding from recent hurricanes.

This is the mound.

This is essentially a trash pil which we archaeologists call a midden.

It was intentionally created by the Calusa over time.

And how long were the Calusa here at this particular site?

The Calusa were here, actually, between 400 A.D.

and 1650.

So about 1,500 years or so.

And how can you see that in this mound?

Each layer of this midde actually tells us a different story about the time periods that they were here.

It does look just like shells from afar, but if you look a little closer, you can actually see exposed pottery pieces, discarded shells from their diet.

As their needs changed their population began to grow.

Floodwaters from hurricanes started to rise.

They decided to keep on going up higher.

So each of these layers here tell us where they visibly stopped building on the mound, lived on it for some time, before building it up even higher.

When you look at the mound, I feel like I can see them eating, I can see them putting the shell on top.

It's a very surreal experience.

It i It makes you feel like you are l stepping inside history and you are a part of this time period.

It's absolutely incredible.

The excavation that led to the exhibit was unique.

Breanna doesn't anticipate further digs, especially since the site is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Her interest is in preserving the artifacts already found.

So on my very first day of work, my wonderful manager took me to an offsite storage unit, 45 minutes away from Mound House.

And he opened the garage doors, and I beheld, like, dozens of banker's boxes And the first thing he said to me was, please don't quit.

And I saw just a giant puzzle to be solved.

She wanted to bring the collection back to its home, and thought of a secure location that would be safe from potential flooding.

And he said, great, where do we want to do it?

And I said, I want the bathroom.

And so, the bathroom here at Mound House is located on the second floor, and it provides a perfect place for a collection storage facility.

I was eager to see the quirky so to this island museum problem and to tour the historic home.

Breanna guided me to the living So this is where visitors can really see what life was like every single day in 1909.

And upstairs to the Calusa exhibit, which displays objects from the excavations in the early 2000s.

This is my favorite artifact in the entire museum.

I believe it is made from Georgia clay, and so it is evidence of trade between the Calusa and other tribes.

It has this very clean crack down the center.

It doesn't look like it was done naturally.

So most likely it was used in some kind of ceremony or ritual, and then broken in half.

But it's estimated to be about 1,400 years old.

And I think it's an incredible testament to the things that we have found here on property.

Our final stop was the new Artifact Preservation Center.

The Artifact Preservation Center is unique because it is a permanent collection storage facility that's actually been put into a 1921 retrofitted bathroom.

It is always under lock and key.

There is just dozens of bags waiting to be cataloged.

This is just bits and pieces of pottery.

Just brush it off a little bit, make sure theres no damaging dirt on it.

Its just, work at it slowly because it's worth doing it gently and meticulously and giving these artifacts a new lease on life so we can keep learning from them.

I'm proud of it.

It's my baby.

Seeing so many clues about the Calusa at a small site like the Mound House leaves me in awe.

There's so much still to learn about their history.

And yet many of us overlooked the advice they left behind on how to build in a region vulnerable to storm surge until powerful hurricanes forced or convinced many homeowners to elevate.

To learn what archaeology can teach us about how the Calusa adapted, I spoke to several experts.

Its reassuring to see how the Calusa people, adapted.

Yes, the Calusa people did adapt to these challenges even when the water came up, there were advantages because there was more diversity of fishes and, and maybe it was easie to, to make a living from fish.

But water was a problem.

And so, adapting to storm surge something that everybody has to do.

And so the Calusa bega to build their sites up higher.

The Calusa history shows us that people have long been adapting to, or working through, or being flexible with change, change in our environment, change in the climate, change in social situations, that that's an inherent part of being human, but it's also a inherent part of living on the coast.

It's a very dynamic place to live.

From the Calusa, we see people who are thriving here for thousands of years who definitely would have encountered storms and other significant weather events.

Right?

And yet they managed to thrive.

So it's possible to build and live in a way that it's going to be in harmony with the environment so that we can, we can also thrive here for thousands of years.

Support for this program was provided by the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau, and Howard K.

& Nancy B. Cohen.