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History and Background

Guana River State Park is a 2,400 acre coastal park located on a barrier island midway between St. Augustine and Jacksonville, Florida on State Highway A1A. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway (Tolomato River), the Guana Tract, which includes a Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission Wildlife Management Area to the north, comprises some 12,000 acres of public conservation and recreational land.
A cross section of the barrier island from east to west within the park would reveal the following natural communities: Atlantic Ocean beach, sand dunes, coastal strand/scrub, estuarine river (Guana River) with associated salt marshes and tidal creeks, maritime hardwood hammock, freshwater depression marshes, pond pine flatwoods and shell mound forest.

Guana River State Park contains seventeen known significant historic or pre-historic cultural sites. Extensive shell middens exist, especially at Shell Bluff Landing and Wright's Landing, along the Tolomato River. The Shell Bluff site also contains an early I9th century Minorcan coquina block well and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Wright's Landing site is believed to be the location of a 17th century Spanish mission, the Nativity of our Lady of Tolomato. The site also contains a prehistoric earthen burial mound and has been nominated as a National Register site.
A 1592 account by a Spanish historian has led present day historians to believe that Guana River was the site of Ponce de Leon's first landing in Florida. Its precise
The land was purchased with Conservation and Recreational Lands (CARL) Save Our Coast funds by the State of Florida in 1984. The tract was privately owned and open to the public for hunting and fishing prior to state acquisition. During the period of private ownership, the Guana River was dammed in 1957, to flood the upstream marshes in order to enhance wintering waterfowl habitat. The result was the creation of the present-day Guana Lake. The lake water is brackish near its southern terminus at Guana Dam and gradually turns into a freshwater reservoir as one travels away from the dam. Both saltwater and freshwater fish species exist in the same body of water.