WATER & COAST
Warm Mineral Springs Park
Sarasota County · Gulf Coast
A warm sinkhole spring at North Port, 230 feet deep, where divers found human remains 12,000 years old.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The sinkhole is 236 feet across at the surface and 230 feet deep, narrowing and widening again like an hourglass. About twenty million gallons a day move through it at around 86 degrees, with five to seven million overflowing, and the water carries a heavy load of dissolved minerals, chloride running 1,600 to 1,700 milligrams a liter. People have been bathing in it for the mineral content since the 1940s. The archaeology is the more remarkable part. Excavations have brought up the remains of more than twenty Paleoindians, some radiocarbon dated to 12,000 years ago, including an 11,000-year-old skeleton laid in a fetal position that may be the oldest intentional burial found in North America. Pleistocene animals are down there too, giant ground sloth and sabre-toothed cat among them. It ran as a private spa from 1946 to 2000. Sarasota County and North Port bought it in 2010 and reopened it for swimming in 2014
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