The Wakulla Volcano -A Major Mystery By HALLIE BOYLES Democrat Staff Writer At 9:51 on the night of Aug. 31, 1886, an earth- quake struck Charleston, S. C. A second shock came ten minutes later. The quake, leaving 60 dead and most of the old coastal city in ruins, was felt over North and Cen- tral Florida. It caused church bells to ring in St. Augustine. It caused water to disappear from Lake Jackson, near Tallahassee, and started water to flowing in a long dry town well at Graceville. It shook the old jail behind the Tallahassee City Hall, where Tillman's Gift shop now stands at Jefferson and Adams streets, and wedged a cell door shut for several hours. But, most important, the earthquake caused the disappearance of a phenomenon which had intrigued adults and excited children in Tallahassee for hun- dreds of years - the Wakulla Volcano. Superstition, folklore and imagination had pro- duced strange tales about the origin of a thin col- of smoke and sometimes fire which rose from the dark swamps some 25 miles southeast of Talla- hassee. The mystery was first reported in Spanish colonial days -- the column of hazy smoke may have been rising on that Easter morning in 1513 when Juan Ponce de Leon sighted the land he named Florida. During the Spanish and territorial eras, back- country folk talked darkly of a pirates' den deep in the jungle. Sailors of the early days on seeing the smoke as they approached the coast said "The old man of the swamp is smoking his pipe." Negroes whispered among themselves that the smoke rose from the Devil's tar kiln. Before the civil war, a popular theory was that the smoke came from the campfire of run- away slaves. During the war, some insisted it marked the hiding place of deserters. Writers, historians, and scouts - amateur and professional - pondered the the mystery seriously and at least one person, a New York newspaperman, lost his life trying to solve it. Novelist Maurice Thompson in his novel "The Tal- lahassee Girl" related that "every newspaperman who comes here writes it up - mostly from distance and hearsay." He went on to say, however, that the mysterious smoke was no hoax or figment of imagination. He called it a "permanent and persistent mystery - the greatest physical phenomenon in Florida." Before it disappeared following the Charleston earthquake, people in Leon, Wakulla and Jefferson counties would stand on the top of high hills, climb trees or go up in the Capitol dome the study the strange column of smoke, sometimes white, some- times gray and sometimes black. A warm spring was reportedly found near the "volcano" but the U. S. Geological Survey said warm springs are found mostly in oil pro- ducing regions and oil had not been found east of the Apalachicola River. ----- Four men are known to have seen the "crater" of the volcano. In the late 1920s Judge A. L. Porter of Wa- kulla County, and a forester, James N. Kirkland, stumbled on to the old volcano while deer hunt- ing - accomplishing a feat which many had tried unsuccessfully. During the dry season of 1932-33 - he's not sure of the exact date - William Wyatt and Fred Wim- pee set out on an expedition which led them to the crater. Wyatt, now in the office supplies business in Tallahassee, still has the notes he made after the trip. Wimpee is in business in Jacksonville. "We were crazy!" recalled Wyatt. "We started out in a Model T Ford with a machete, a hand ax, a flashlight and a small bag of sandwiches. I remember it was about dawn on Saturday. "We planned to get back that night but we were lucky to get back late Sunday night. We followed directions left by a Chicago news- paperman who had advanced near the column of smoke before he became exhausted and had to turn back. "He had left slats nailed to a tall pine tree which he climbed to get his bearings. We found the tree and some of the pieces of wood were still nailed to the tree." The two young men drove their car as far as it would go, the proceeded on foot. They traveled first to Flint Rock, an abandoned sawmill site about 25 miles southeast of Tallahassee, then on five miles south to Fanlew, another old sawmill site. "That was the jumping-off place" Wyatt said. "We hacked our way southwest toward the Gulf and after about three miles we found what we were looking for just outside the edge of the swamp." There, Wyatt said, they found rocks as big as houses strewn over an area about four miles. "The rocks looked burned. The boulders were so big we would chop through undergrowth and come face to face with what appeared to be a solid stone wall. "Some queer work of nature had gone on there. It was a gruesome place. Right by great sinks (continued on page 36) (continued from page 33) there were piles of rock that appeared to have been blown out of the ground. "The rocks were different. The edges were rounded off as as though they had been subjected to great heat. Some looked like they had been melted and blown or pushed out of the earth. "There was something eerie about the place because there were no trees as in the surround- ing land, yet it had never been logged because there were no stumps. Some great change had come over that part of the earth - I think some- thing happened that raised or lowered it." Hungry, exhausted and wary of snakes, the two young explorers slept on top of a huge rock that night and left for home the next morning. Dodging sinks, fighting insects and hacking at tangled undergrowth, they were ready to agree with the oldtimer in Wacissa, about 10 miles northeast of the "volcano" who had told them as they passed through there, "You're a couple of dam- fools." Wyatt said he wouldn't mind making another trip there provided he was with a sizable search party armed with walkie-talkies, guns, modern jungle equipment and plenty of food. Wyatt said he conferred before making the trip with Dr. Raymond Bellamy and Dr. Leland Lewis, respective heads of the Sociology and Chemistry Departments at Florida State University, now re- tired, and the late W. T. Cash, state librarian. "They were real interested in the mystery of the volcano," he said, "but if they had known the danger we faced they would not have encour- aged us to go." It had long been considered sport in Tallahassee to go "volcano hunting." Reportedly, it was in the 1870's that the New York Herald Tribune sent a reporter to Tallahas- see to get to the bottom of the volcano story. He formed a search party and hired the best guides but had to turn back exhausted. As the story goes, he died on the way back. Clarence Simpson of the State Geological Survey made several trips to the area and re- ported finding rocks of various sizes and shapes, some as big as houses, which appeared to have been thrown up out of the earth. He said they were of flint and limestone and not of volcanic origin. It was reported that during exploration for oil in 1949 in the area, geologists reported finding material of volcanic origin at a depth of 7,500 feet. Judge Porter several years ago reported details of his accidental discovery of the "volcano." He recalled that arguments had gone on pro and con as long as he could remember about whether the strange column of smoke had come from a real volcano. After finding the place from which the smoke had risen for centuries he said he was ready to con- cede that a "fiery eruption" may have occurred there. Here is the story of Judge Porter's adventure as he told it: "I believe James N. Kirkland and I are pos- sibly the only two living people who have seen the crater of the extinct Wakulla Volcano. "Jim and I were deer hunting in the Gum Swamp of the Pinhook area. The hounds struck a trail in the north end of the swamp and trailed out east. I flanked north and Jim south. "After following the dogs for possibly a mile I came to a small rocky knoll and in the very top of the knoll was a small crater about the size of a dishpan. The rock extended as deep as I could see and appeared to be burned. "I called Jim and we agreed then and there that we had found the 'volcano' of which we had heard and read for so many years. "I know very little about geology but in my lay- man's opinion the rock forming the crater was not igneous but appeared to be sedimentary rock where natural gas found its way to the surface and was set afire by lightning or a woods fire and con- tinued to burn for many years until the gas pocket was exhausted. "In 1943 and 1944 when the major oil companies were making geophysical tests in this area, I noted by their flags that they made very close shots from Camp Parker (a hunting camp) to Double Sinks. "I am told that these close shots indicate that interesting formations are being encountered by the exploration crew. I hope that some day this whole Gulf area is going to produce oil and gas like the coast of Texas and Louisiana. "It is not unusual that the smoke seen for years was not traced to the point of origin. In those days the Pinhook was wild. When I first came to Wakulla County I and most other peo- ple were afraid of getting lost anywhere be- tween East River and the Aucilla. There were few roads and at times you could walk for half a day and not see another hunter. "Away back before I came, most hunters went into the area by boat and never got as far north as the spot where we found the crater. "In those days it took two men to go to the spring for a bucket of water after dark -- one to carry the bucket and the flambeau and the other to carry a gun to keep off the panthers. "At the present time the country is cut up by three highways, truck trails and wire fences so that anybody can navigate it without getting lost. "However, since the area has been under fire protection, a dense growth of jack pines, wire grass and other vegetation has covered the entire area and it would be difficult for Jim and me to find our crater again. "I am strongly opposed to giving away any- thing that Wakulla County has, by reapportionment or otherwise, but honesty demands that I state that the Wakulla Volcano is either in Section 5 or 6, Township 1 South, Range 3 East, in Jefferson County. "It should be about a mile east of the Wa- kulla County line. Jefferson County people are good neighbors with whom I have spent many happy days deer hunting and I don't want to take anything that belongs to them." Kirkland at that time agreed with all the details related by Judge Porter about finding the crater. He said he believed he could find it again but the forest was so thick that only two or three men armed with machetes could chop their way in even though there were trails and creekbeds to follow. Kirkland said the rock around the crater appeared to be flint and that the fissure went down into the rock "at a slant."