The experience begins when you leave your car and 21st century Marco Island behind for a time thousands of years ago, when the Calusa - a prehistoric Indian tribe that once occupied the Naples area - built an important religious center on the island.
The grounds of the new and still developing Marco Island Historical Museum represent a Calusa village built upon an elevation of shells, riddled with canals and decorated with native vegetation and a thatched roof and pole structure modeled after native buildings.
The main museum building, which opened in June 2011 with three temporary exhibits, too imitates Calusa building style with thatch and tabby mortar. It displays an 8x4-foot exterior tile wall mural by local artist Paul Arsenault, which depicts a typical Calusa shell-fishing expedition into the mangroves.
One of the museum's Calusa vignettes — Photo courtesy of Chelle Koster Walton
The Calusa diet consisted mainly of shellfish, and the discards from their dining became the shell mounds upon which they built their homes. The taller the mound, the higher the occupants’ status, with temples built upon the highest of all.
The importance of Marco Island to Calusa civilization - which spread throughout Southwest Florida and even into the Keys - was established in 1896 by archaeologist Frank Hamilton Cushing in what has been called one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in North America.
The most famous of his excavation finds was a six-inch wooden effigy that’s come to be known as the Key Marco Cat. The original currently resides in the Smithsonian Institution, but museum planners hope to someday bring it and other Cushing discoveries back home.
In the meantime, a super-sized bronze replica presides over the courtyard.
Inside the museum, two exhibit rooms are devoted to Calusa culture. The exhibit on the Calusa and their legacy, now under expansion, revolves around a recreated Calusa village with a temple and other vignettes. A walk-through replica of Cushing’s vessel, the Silver Spray, is being planned.
A short video introduces visitors to research findings regarding the ancient people. Signage and showcases displaying tools, jewelry and other artifacts and replicas explore Calusa and other native Florida peoples. Visitors can also look at photographs depicting the more modern development of Marco Island. A grand hall displays traveling art and photographic exhibits.