Interview with Archie Jackson 17
April 4, 2001

J: You haven't lived until you ride from one side to the other on a horse. It will take
 you all day! I have done it.

B: On the canals or just through the middle.

J: Right through the middle of it. Of course, this was years ago. I saw some things
 happen out there. Airplanes crashed out there during the war.

B: They have horse rides out there occasionally, but I missed the one they had a
 couple years ago. Rangers take people out there across a good part of it. Have you ever done that overnight campout? There is one where they walk from the Sink to Persimmon Point and camp out. There is no water. There's an outhouse.
 Persimmon Point overlooks the Prairie. It's beautiful. Have you been there?

J: Many times.

B: It's a beautiful place.

J: The lore and the legend around the area was that there was a wagon train attacked
 there by the Indians and they buried their valuables and stuck a gun barrel down where they buried them and they never found it. That's just a legend. It was told
 in my family for years.

 It's just like out here. Bruce an old-timer out here, told my
 daddy there used to be a Seminole Indian fort just east of our house up here. I know there was one right outside our kitchen window because we dug stuff out of
 it. I have a 1842 dime, crystal balls, cannon balls.

B: Do you know which fort it was?

J: Fort Crane. Several years ago some individuals from Tampa came up here with
 maps. They would fly around taking infrared pictures. They said, "We want to excavate Fort Crane." I said Fort Crane is over here on 234. The state has designated it. They had signs over there then. "Oh no, it's right here in your daddy's pasture." They went out there and began to dig. The first thing they dug up was a cannonball, about a six pounder. Then they dug up the old watches where you had to wind them. They had an for
 infantry and a horse rearing with one foot up on the other. I have it; it's in here in my collection. There was an 1842 dime, which dates the fort. There were crystal balls out there. They dug up hundreds of crystal balls. They said this was where
 Fort Crane was.

B: There are a lot of those forts that they've misplaced.

J: As I said, they took infrared pictures from airplanes and they said this was where
 it was.

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