The East Lake area was always there. Though our community is new, the land is as old as time. Looking at a map of East Lake from dinosaur times, we find it under 10 ft. or so of water. This was because the ice caps up north, on Greenland and down south on Antarctica, were for the most part melted. That excess water was added to the oceans, and the sea level was higher. What a great place for aquatic life it was! East Lake was certainly home to a large Plesiosaur named Elasmosaurus (32 ft..), as well as others like Tylosaurus (29 ft.), Archelon (a 15 ft.. turtle) and various ammonites. Fish and sharks, of course, were around as well. If you find an old fossil in your backyard, therefore, it is probably not a dinosaur at all, but a sea creature.

During the Ice Age East Lake was uncovered, as the water was trapped in enormous glaciers. Mammals and other land animals arrived, including some big ones like the black bear and wild hog. Alligators and turtles also found a nice spot here in the marshes.

Things warmed up around 35,000 years ago, and pinning down the time when members of the human species came to the area is no easy task. Because Indians before Columbus' voyage did not keep written records, what can be made out comes from speculation and archeology:

It seems there were about 100,000 Indians in Florida in 1492 (40k Timicuans around Jacksonville, 25k Apalachee in the panhandle, 8k Tocobaga in the Tampa-Orlando stretch, 20k Calusa in the Tampa-Ft.. Myers stretch, and 2k Jeaga, Jobe and Ais along the east coast).

These original tribes, descended from the original crossers of the Bering Strait around 10,000 BC, came to the area in the Middle Ages from elsewhere north. In 1539 when Hernando de Soto explored the region, he met very few people crossing through Pinellas County. He may have came through East Lake, or he may not have.

By around 1700, these early Indians were for the most part gone, supplanted by the Seminole, who arrived at that time. They went north and were absorbed into other tribes like the Creek, leaving the Seminole as the sole tribe inhabiting Florida. When the White Man began settling here, even the hardy Seminole, immigrants themselves, moved on or were cut down by microorganisms they had no biological resistence to.

In 1819, when Spain seded Florida to the United States, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams gave the nod to General Andrew Jackson- to take control of Florida and establish a territorial government. That meant dealing with the Seminoles, and thus in 1823, Jackson (who was promoted) sent William DuVal (of DuVal County fame) to negociate with them for relocation to their new reservation located near Orlando. By 1880 only around 200 Seminole were left in the state off the reservation. As for East Lake during this period, not only is there no evidence of any Indian settlement here, but no White settlers either. Continue---->