Fort Center

Fort Center is an archaeological site in Glades County, Florida, a few miles northwest of Lake Okeechobee. It was occupied for more than 2,000 years, from 450 BCE until about 1700 CE. The inhabitants of Fort Center may have been cultivating maize centuries before it appeared anywhere else in Florida. Fort Center is a complex of earthwork mounds, linear embankments, middens, circular ditches, and an artificial pond occupying an area approximately long and wide extending east-west along Fisheating Creek, a stream that empties unto Lake Okeechobee. The complex is named after a blockhouse located at the site during the Second Seminole War. No trace remains of the blockhouse, which may have been eroded by the river.