Located on Little Sarasota Bay in Osprey, Florida, on thirty acres, Historic Spanish Point is a museum and environmental complex operated by the Gulf Coast Heritage Association. The museum includes an archaeological exhibit of a prehistoric shell midden used as a midden, a chapel, a shipyard, nature trails, a citrus packing plant, and a historic turn-of-the-century pioneer farm house museum ( Burnett, 1986). Historic Spanish Point is the first archaeological site to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places and offers excellent, leisurely walking tours to the many visitors who regularly visit this site year-round. There is an archaeological record that encompasses approximately 5,000 years of Florida's prehistory. . Inhabitation of the site extends from the Late Archaic period, 5,900 to 3,200 years ago, through the Manasota and Late Woodland periods, 3,200 to 1,000 years ago. The Osprey School Visitor Center is a building designed in the Spanish Colonial style between 1926 and 1928 by Tampa architect and currently serves as the Historic Point Visitor Center. It is also used as a museum store and administrative office. Historic Spanish Point is a composite museum with many layers and facets. The “A Window into the Past” exhibition provides plenty of evidence related to the past. It is one of the few places where visitors step inside a prehistoric shell midden and are surrounded on three sides by evidence of ancient times (Burnett, 1986). During the prehistoric period, the inhabitants of the bay's shores saw the introduction of ceramics and the transition from nomadic hunters and gatherers to sedentary subsistence societies. These people took advantage of the abundant resources provided by the Gulf, forests, marshes and ...... middle of paper ...... the removal of invasive non-native vegetation and the addition of an ecosystem of Appropriate wetlands have added more beautiful and unique habitats for local wildlife (Milanich, 1980). At the tops of tall trees, ospreys are seen perched with fish in their talons, while the distinctive calls of woodpeckers are usually heard all year round. Works Cited Burnett, GM (1986). Florida's Past: The people and events that shaped the state. Florida: Pineapple Press Sarasota. Brown, R. C. (1994). The First Peoples of Florida: 12,000 Years of Human History. New York: Pineapple Press Sarasota. Milanich, J. T. (1980). Archeology of Florida. Florida: Academic Press. Walter, N. (2010). Revolutionary street painting. New York: Pelican Press. Ball, D. (October 23, 2010). Artists bring the sidewalk to life in Sarasota. Retrieved from http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20101028/ARTICLE/10281004.