Koreshan State Historic Site

Description

The Koreshan State Historic Site is a state park in Lee County, Florida located on U.S. Highway 41 at Corkscrew Road. It was also added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 4, 1976 under the designation of Koreshan Unity Settlement Historic District.It contains areas of pine flatwoods habitat and the site of a religious colony, the Koreshan Unity, whose last members deeded the land to the state in 1961. Recent aerial video footage of the site.FloraThe Koreshans imported a wide range of plant species from across the world, including: a Araucaria bidwillii (false monkey puzzle) tree, which is indigenous to Queensland, Australia, and drops seed pods as large as a football, a number of sausage trees, which are native to Africa and a favored food of giraffes, eucalyptus, mango and other fruit bearing trees, an extraordinary amount of Japanese bamboo that originally hails from the Edison and Ford Winter Estates, and many flowering trees and plants of a wide variety.FaunaAmong the wildlife of the park are gopher tortoises, bobcats, gray foxes, North American river otters and American alligators, as well as such birds as swallow-tailed kites, bald eagles, northern bobwhites, and red-shouldered hawks.