For we alone best serve all needs
As tools within His hand.
—Charles Cottingham
Marianna, Florida
The stalagmite on the right is almost joined with a stalactite. If it does, it will make a column. The grape-like clusters in the upper foreground result when the flow of water is so slow that all of it evaporates from the ceilings and deposits its mineral load there.
FLORIDA CAVERNS
A NATURE-MADE WONDERLAND
By Robert O. Vernon
Assistant Director, Florida Geological Survey
Florida is truly a child of the sea, since all the rocks composing its land were formed directly on the ocean bottoms or by streams emptying along the shores. From the record of these rocks we know that Florida has been alternately above and below the sea many times in the geologic past. In fact, the rocks visible in the park area at Florida Caverns, near Marianna, Florida, and in the caves were formed from the hard shells of animals that lived in one of these seas. As the animals died, their shells accumulated on the sea bottoms, where they were covered by other shells and hardened into lime rock.
These shells, called “fossils” by the geologist, are remains representing cemeteries of the past. Along most of our coastal areas and sea bottoms these shells are accumulating and forming limestone today. Such limestone has formed also in the areas many miles removed from the present seas, as in Iowa and other middle western states, telling us where seas have been in the past.