The name Jungle Trail conjures up visions of a narrow footpath through a dense tangle of vegetation dappled with sun and shade. This is undoubtedly how the barrier island’s present Jungle Trail looked to the Ais Indians, the area’s earliest inhabitants. The Ais gathered oysters and fished along the river for hundreds of years, but by the time they came in contact with the Spaniards, their culture was dying and by 1750 they had vanished.
It was not until the mid-1800s that the first settlers began traveling down the Indian River in search of land to farm. The opportunity to acquire lands through the Homestead Act had become possible after the Civil War, and rough trails connecting these homesteads ran along the river.
Read the entire article in the March 1999 issue
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