Little Salt Spring
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Little Salt Spring
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Little Salt Spring
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| Location | North Port, Florida |
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| Nearest city | North Port |
| Coordinates | 27°4′29″N 82°14′0″W / 27.07472°N 82.23333°WCoordinates: 27°4′29″N 82°14′0″W / 27.07472°N 82.23333°W |
| NRHP Reference # | 79000692 |
| Added to NRHP | July 10, 1979 |
Little Salt Spring is an archaeological and paleontological site in North Port, Florida, United States. It is located directly off Price Boulevard between US 41 and I-75 adjacent to Heron Creek Middle School in the city of North Port. On July 10, 1979, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Little Salt Spring is a feature of the karst topography of Florida, specifically an example of a sinkhole. It is classified as a third magnitude spring. The numerous deep vents at the bottom of the sinkhole feed oxygen-depleted groundwater into it, producing an anoxic environment below a depth of about 5 m (16.4 ft). This fosters the preservation of Paleo-Indian and early Archaic artifacts and ecofacts, as well as fossil bones of the extinct megafauna once found in Florida.
Originally it was thought that Little Salt Spring was a shallow freshwater pond, but in the 1950s SCUBA divers discovered that it was a true sinkhole extending downward over 200 ft (61 m), similar to the cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula (another karst region). The actual depth of the surface pond is forty feet (12.2 m) with a central shaft dropping vertically to an inverted cone with a maximum determined depth at the outer edges of 245 feet (75 m). There are ledges around the wall of the cenote at 16 and 27 meters (52 and 89 feet) below the present water level.
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