Audio
Oral History Interview with Charles Lawson
Transcript
Abstract: Charles “Chuck” Lawson was the archaeologist and cultural resource manager at Biscayne National Park. The following oral history interview was recorded in 2017 prior to his leaving the park. Before coming to Biscayne, Lawson attended graduate school at Florida State University from 1998 to 2000. While at Florida State, he began working for the Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) in Tallahassee on Civil War artifacts and continued for 10 years as a permanent NPS employee. In 2010, Lawson then moved to Biscayne for the archaeologist position. In this interview, Lawson speaks about his major projects at Biscayne including the transfer of Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, underwater, and terrestrial archaeology. He mentioned that the most frustrating issue for him was looting and vandalism of the shipwrecks. Later in the interview, Lawson spoke about the challenges he faced in writing interpretational material about the historically segregated beaches like Virginia Key.
BONNIE CIOLINO: This is Bonnie Ciolino, Archivist at the South Florida Collections Management Center in Everglades National Park. Today is February 21st, 2017. I’m here with Chuck Lawson; we’re filming in Biscayne National Park, uh, conducting an oral history prior to Chuck’s Departure. Um, and, um, Chuck, we’ll start off by asking you to spell your name, um, and state your name and spell it for the record please.
CHUCK LAWSON: Um, my name is Charles Lawson, C-H-A-R-L-E-S L-A-W-S-O-N. Chuck is fine.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm. And your title and your position here at Biscayne?
LAWSON: Um, my official title is Archeologist. My position description, uh, calls me the Cultural Resource Manager—
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: —for Biscayne National Park.
CIOLINO: Terrific. Can you talk a little bit about your background prior to coming to Biscayne please?
LAWSON: Sure. Uh, I went to graduate school at Florida State University, uh, starting in 1998. I spent two years there or a year and-a-half as a teaching assistant and then I needed a job so that I could eat. So I started—I started as a student at the Southeast Archeological Center in Tallahassee and worked, started washing Civil War minie balls in the wet lab and was pretty good at field work and things like that. About a year, so in 20—uh, I worked there for about a—I think not much more than a year. And a tech—a term employee, who was kind of my, not really my supervisor but like field—field supervisor was, uh, lined up for a permanent gig. And for personal reasons, he wound up moving to Texas at the last minute. And I, who had just decided to practice applying for federal, permanent federal jobs, had filled out an application for it knowing that it was really this other guy’s gig. But then got it because he hadn’t—because—because he turned it down. So I was right away made a permanent NPS employee and for a long time, I didn’t realize just how lucky I had been at that. But I worked at SEAC, including that year, so as a student for 10 years and—and then stepped up, little—little promotions every once in a while—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —over that time, um, doing mostly compliance, uh, compliance, archeology all over the southeast. And toward the end, I was specializing in remote sensing, uh, geophysical surveys. And—
CIOLINO: That’s some of the work that you did down at the Dry Tortugas kind of?
LAWSON: Yes, uh, well I was—yeah, while I was there, I did the—I did a big—my—my first and largest geophysical survey was the radar survey of the inside of the [inaudible] granite at Fort Jefferson. Uh, I—I did—I did a—I did a short detail here. My predecessor passed away in 2007 I—I think.
CIOLINO: Around then, yeah.
LAWSON: I think that’s 2007 and so this position was vacant for two and-a-half, three years, and, uh, in 2008, I did a detail here just to help them out, catch them up.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Uh, and then in 2010, I took the job as the archeologist at Biscayne.
CIOLINO: Okay. Um, that’s actually a great segue because my—my next question for you was to discuss the history of the culture resources program at Biscayne, um, prior to your arrival, the work that Brenda Lanzendorf had done to develop this program.
LAWSON: Right. So the—the first stuff that went on cultural resource related at Biscayne was associated with, you two—two things, HMS Fowey and the legal, uh, wranglings and archeological work that was done by Florida State—Florida State University, uh, SEAC and the relatively new SCRU Unit. And back in the, uh, in the 19—in the 1980’s, there was also, uh, Terry Helmers—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —volunteer, who spent a lot of time just looking for shipwrecks and just trying to figure out pre-GPS means with which to get back onto shipwreck sites so that Bart could know where they were and find them and manage them. Uh, those things, it’s the early. Before that, uh, not much, in fact like the—that national monument was created in 1968 and they were folk—folks out illegally, uh, treasure hunting without salvage claims. The monument came and went and land transfer came and went and nothing changed about what was going on on those wrecks out on the reef for at least—at least 10 years. And actually Fowey was part of that. And people were still out looking for shipwrecks and, uh, uh, so they could score treasure off of them. And what was interesting about Fowey was that the guy who found it, uh, actually tried to make an admiralty claim against it, which was, as far as I know, nobody—I don’t think anybody made admiralty claim against anything. And what was ultimately going to become the national monument and certainly nobody ever had an active admiralty claim against anything; elsewhere in the Keys, yes, but not here.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: But he had—he had made an attempt, but the monument existed then so, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can look in lots of different books and histories about Fowey. I don’t need to rehash it but the park service wants stewardship of that site.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: And so that was—that was the first like professional archeology done here was tied up in that.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Uh, there were some other things that came out of that, including a professional falling out between SCRU and SEAC.
CIOLINO: And for the record, SCRU is, um—
LAWSON: SRC Now.
CIOLINO: And that stands for the Submerged—
LAWSON: Submerged, uh, Submerged Cultural Resources Unit.
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: SCRU and, uh, the SRC today is what they have become—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —Sub—uh, Submerged Resources Center. Um, the, uh, SEAC is still SEAC—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —the Southeast Archeological Center. Uh, they had a—some disagreements between each other which ultimately ended in SEAC no longer having a dive team. Uh, SCRU, uh, managing everything under water and archeology across the country. And Biscayne falling out kind of I guess sort of on the side of SCRU, definitely not friendly so much with SEAC, which meant that their, what should’ve been a cultural resources program went monitored by people with no experience with cultural resource protection. And so things like there’s anchors in—in Elliott Key Harbor that park rangers picked up out of protection and dumped and dumped into—oh, we found an anchor; it’s not safe here, someone will steal it. So they stole it and put it in the harbor; no idea where it came from. There’s a pile of them in there. Other ones that were—that—that, uh, people were caught stealing them and nobody did anything about it and said they just took the anchor and put it in the pile in the harbor in Elliott Key. Lots and lots and lots of stuff. Lots of stuff. There isn’t a single site in Biscayne that isn’t looted and—and—and messed with. But it was another—it was a long time before, uh, before a program really, uh, ramped back up again. And that was under Jim Adams in 1996 I think is when they actually said Biscayne has a cultural resource program.
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: And Jim—Jim’s focus was, uh, kind of like what Terry was doing—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —uh, finding sites and figure—1996, now GPS is just coming onto the market and they’re—and like finding the sites and getting them on maps, uh, simple non-disturbance, uh, sketches just to see what the park has and make a list and then Jim also wrote a—some management plans and resource stuff like that. And he was at it until, oh crap, not I don’t know. Uh, look it up. But, uh, but Brenda—
CIOLINO: Early 2000’s I think.
LAWSON: I think so.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: I think Brenda started in—in 2000 or 2001.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: And I believe that she was here as—as a student or an assistant of Jim’s at some—at some point and wound up, uh, taking over for him. And then fr—I mean, I knew—I knew—I met Brenda a couple of time while—while I worked at SEAC and she worked here—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —but not enough to know really what she was—what was going on down here. Biscayne was still during that time, operating, I mean, there was—it’s not like anybody hated each other at—between Biscayne and SEAC—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —but they didn’t—not—unlike the other parks in the southeast, they—we didn’t hear from Biscayne, they were doing their own thing down here.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: And they were doing some stuff—they were definitely doing their own thing. They—they, like there’s a file cabinet here with site file information, all that stuff that Terry and—and Jim had been compiling and Brenda had worked on too.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: It only existed here. And out of, you know, fear that, uh, it would get looted if anybody knew where any of the sites were at. So, uh, and that—that’s how—that’s how I found it when I came. But—but Brenda, I think—I think, uh, I don’t have a lot of the archives—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —uh, that she turned over.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm.
LAWSON: She knew she was sick.
CIOLINO:: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Uh, that she turned over to—to—to collections, to our—to collections folks is pretty much the only record of what she had going on. I didn’t—there’s nothing else really here.
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: Um, but I know she was—she was keen on a lot of public, uh, programs.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: She did a lot of talks at local dive shops about, uh, resource stewardship. She, uh, helped Ken Stewart stand up the Diving with a Purpose program—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —which is probably, outside of the Park Service, what Biscayne is most known for. Uh, it’s a—it’s a well—well-endowed with awards, uh, program of, uh, uh, the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and, uh, teaching people basics of shipwreck stewardship and monitoring and assessing and then—and then, uh, yeah, giving them opportunities to work on wrecks.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Um, what else did she do? She also did some field work in—on sites. I don’t really know why she did it.
CIOLINO: Okay. That’s fine.
LAWSON: There’s some—there’s some sites that kind of—kind of got a little excavated and I—I don’t really know—don’t really know why. See and I—I think that some of that really should have been interacting with the rest of the Park Service—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —during that tenure. Um, Brenda—there was no other park service experience. It was just here—
CIOLINO: Gotcha.
LAWSON: —and so they were—she was just doing what they had been doing. So anyway, when I came, uh, we took care of the files that only existed in hurricane prone, uh, Biscayne’s headquarters and got copies of them where they belong and filled out the online databases with the shipwreck information. Um, I have been, uh, I don’t know what—you got more questions; have I gone too far?
CIOLINO: Oh, yeah. No, no, you’re—
LAWSON: That was the background. Now we’ve gotten to me—me showing up kind of now—
CIOLINO: Yes. Okay, that’s great.
LAWSON: So—so I—I came here in 2010 and some, like I said, my—my predecessor is not—I couldn’t ask her questions. So I kind of had what was here and what was—and what was in archives for what had been going on. And I saw some issues with the—with the, uh, with this, you know, the site files and some issues definitely with compliance.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Like the park really wasn’t doing it.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: And some of that is visible in places like Boca Chita—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —which was on the National Register when Andrew hit.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: And was just totally rebuilt with no consideration for the historic district in—in the mid-‘90’s. It’s not like—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: —the laws were new then. So there—they definitely were not doing anything.
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: And they just, simple like the compliance files in the computer just had oh, yeah, it looks good. There wasn’t anything going on. So that’s different now. We’re doing really high level of compliance review for and especially considering that this is a park with where the cultural resources are really not in a place that we, you know, people mostly come, except for Boca Chita, people mostly come here and we—any—well it’s not about where people are at because people are all over shipwrecks all the time but the—but it’s about where we—where we physically do stuff. And like, we don’t put water lines out on the islands through the Indian sites—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —because they’re in the middle of nowhere.
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: The place where we do typically do construction and stuff, that could get you into trouble with archaeologies here and we don’t have those resources here.
CIOLINO: Right. So the park, uh, of course, has both terrestrial and underwater, uh, archeological—
LAWSON: Yeah.
CIOLINO: —resources. Which have you considered to be the most challenging in terms of management?
LAWSON: Oh, uh, without a doubt, the—the shipwrecks are the number one, uh, well, there’s a lot of number ones for—for management challenges without resources. Uh, the one that—that frustrates me and—and it’s frustrated me for the whole time that I’ve been here is looting and vandalism on the wrecks.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Because they—it’s ongoing. There is, like I said, there isn’t a single one that isn’t touched. I don’t—I’m not sure if people are still stealing stuff from these wrecks because most of them have very little material left on them.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: But they still don’t stop digging holes and ripping the timbers up and moving artifacts that they don’t want around and digging—digging holes in the sites. Maybe they’re finding things in these holes. I don’t know. The couple of, uh, of professional projects that we’ve done other than Fowey, there’s almost nothing on the wrecks because they’ve all been dug up before and somebody took all the artifacts already. But it’s—but it’s, I mean, it’s hard to say how frequently the looting happens because they dig a hole in the sand and if you don’t catch it in a day or two, it’s going to fill back in.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: It’s not like on land, the—the evidence doesn’t stay for very long.
CIOLINO: True.
LAWSON: But given that, I found it enough times to think that I think it’s every weekend. I think people are on the shipwrecks ev—every weekend. And so I get a—I have a lot of frustration over the fact that this park has never made a case. Well in 1985, they caught, uh, some rangers caught people with artifacts onboard a boat coming through a cut and they never really tied it back to the wreck that they supposedly came from. And I mean, it was a successful case because they—they plead out to like theft of government property or something like that. And they had their—their—they lost their boats and their—their boat and their scuba gear and their trailer and all of that. So it was successful from that. But that’s the only time. And I would swear to God this—
CIOLINO: In ’85?
LAWSON: —felony is happening every single weekend and we have nothing to—
CIOLINO: Does anything ever show up on—on the black market or from—
LAWSON: I never—we look for that stuff. We see—I see on things like Treasure Net, uh, we see people talking about Biscayne. People talk about Fowey a lot.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: People have talked about projects that we’ve worked on.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Uh, uh, but the—and—but, uh, I’ve never seen—I’ve never seen artifacts for sale. But again, I don’t think they’re finding any artifacts. I think they’re just tearing these sites up because they—and for a long time too, like I put together these, uh, uh, kind of flyers for law enforcement, uh, of sites that I thought were, uh, most at risk—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —uh, for looting and like showed them pic—pictures of the artifacts, types of things from these sites to be on the lookout for if you’re in these areas and—and real nice little glossy things and then—and then as time went by, I started to realize because then I’d see sites, I’m like why in the hell did somebody dig a hole into this? This is a barge. They, you know, why would they do this? And then I—I realized that I know where they all are. There’s a hundred sites out there. I know where every one of them is. I know which ones are good and which ones suck. But if you’re a dude from Miami and you only know about the barge, well then, it’s the only one you got. So you can go and wreck—dig up the barge. So it’s like unpredictable of where they’re going to—which sites they’re going to tear into. But, um, but yeah, so that’s the—that’s the—that’s the number one thing that—yeah. It’s the—yeah, that’s the num—but we have—we have more number ones. Uh, and the other number ones come with, uh, the maintenance of our historic structures. Uh, and one of the things I did while I was here and maybe, depending on who you talk to, it could be the biggest failure of my tenure here or it could be the biggest success. I think it’s probably both. Uh, but was we—we accepted transfer of Fowey Rocks Lighthouse along with all its issues. And—from the—from the U.S. Coast Guard. You know, extraordinarily significant historic structure.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Uh, old, uh, second oldest building associated with Dade County. The first—the only other thing older is the other lighthouse on Key Biscayne that it replaced. Um, lots of history, uh, for a park that’s marine—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —I mean, and that most people come to on boats and it’s a popular spot that people come to on boats up there by that lighthouse. I mean, there’s no more iconic structure. When you look up the weather report before you go out boating and you see a picture of that lighthouse, so there’s nothing more important his—you know, at least visible, iconic than that lighthouse. But and—and it’s not about to fall down. We did an analysis of it before we took it from the Coast Guard and it’s—it’s got probably 25 or 30 years before the structural components start to rust to the point they’re going to fall in. But everything else on it is trash. Everything else is—it needs to be replaced. And it’s an environmental catastrophe. It’s got fuel oil on it, asbestos, lead paint. And I took it and convinced the—the superintendent and the regional office to just take it from Co—from Coast Guard, which I’m sure they were ecstatic about. But, uh, um, yeah, and that was a mistake, not taking it; that was the right thing to do. The Park Ser—not to let Coast Guard auction it off to, you know, and have an in holder in historic structure on the—on the reef that we were then going to have to deal with a permit and decide what they were—well we couldn’t decide what they would be doing with it if it was auctioned. But the—so taking it was right. But not forcing an agency run by homeland security that has endless resources to send a check along with it was a mistake. And the only—the only—if, uh, I have no excuse for that mistake other than that I’m—I was relatively new and I’d had no experience with that before. I was a little bit blinded by mission because I wanted it. But the other thing is that it wa—it is our mission, it was the right thing to do, and I had—and I spent a lot of my, uh, physical and the work that I had to do was convincing my agency to accept it. And if my agency had just accepted that it’s their responsibility to do these things and that’s why we’re here, um, maybe I would’ve expended some of that energy on trying to get the other agency to do the right thing and give us some money. And I would say for anybody who looks at this oral history, that that’s not out of the question still. I mean, Coast Guard is still there and they still got a lot of money. So somebody ought to—with a little bit more clout than me, uh, should still go after them and you know, make them do their part. Anyway, so that’s—but—but—so that’s a management issue.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: We’ve now owned it for four—three—four years—three years, four years. Four years. And to date, there’s only like three people in the park who’ve even been on it. So we don’t do shit on that light. It’s just—it’s just getting that much more rusty. Part of the dock fell into the water since we—since we acquired it. We—it—we—we have no hope without staff of doing anything for that light. I mean, it’s—even the smallest project that could—would barely make a difference out there is—is a quarter million dollars. Um, I don’t really know what it would cost to do the whole thing but probably $6 million would do—would do something. But, uh, but then what?
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: And—and I would like, what I think would be great is if it was fixed up is that it needs a keeper. And the—a volunteer keeper program where we dump some poor sucker out there and just like the old keepers, when they’re bored, they paint and keep the—keep the structure up and when it’s nice out, just like the old keepers would do, you op—you open it up and you let people in. When it’s calm and the boats can pull up, you let people come and see it. So I mean, that would be great; people would love it. But it’s a long ways from that. Long ways from that. But it’s ours now. Unless you’re going to give it back away to somebody else, which maybe we’ll do but, uh, we at least got to deal with the—it’ll fall onto the reef eventually if you don’t do something—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: Oh, and then Boca Chita as well. So Boca Chita has historic structures has historic structures all over them made out of concrete faced with oolitic limestone and the concrete has got rebar inside of it. It’s just like every concrete house in the Keys. Uh, concrete rusts inside—or the rebar rusts inside the concrete, expands, falls, the concrete falls apart and deteriorates into nothing. And so the—those structures all need regular attention. Nobody on our staff can manage that. We don’t have anybody, we don’t have any masons or concrete workers in—in the—and the maintenance staff that we have is overworked with just keeping the toilets flushing at the headquarters and at Boca Chita. But the—so the idea that the structures themselves—they don’t get any attention by us. The only thing that happens to them is the visitors out there are dickheads and they throw coconuts through the windows and smash stuff, throw the picnic tables into the bay, uh, whatever. But the—so they just get worse and worse and worse and then they need high-dollar projects, uh, out of sick, lick and repair rehab to get anything fixed. And high-dollar projects are—high-dollar projects are kind of hard to stomach because for the most part, those buildings are ornamental. And also, the history isn’t really appreciated by any of the visitors that go there.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: They—they’re just there to go camping and start fights.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: So it’s, I mean, it’s hard even for me to justify asking the region to spend $400,000 on refacing the lighthouse. Needs to be done, historic structure, popular, ico— icon—another icon, I mean, that lighthouse at Boca Chita is—is the iconic imagery for Biscayne. But yeah, tough. So that’s—that’s number two probab—probably. And depending on how you look at it, maybe that’s number one. I mean, the—the more visitors are im—you know, impacted by the fact that those—that those historic structures that they can see and experience are in bad shape, then—then the out of sight, out of mind shipwrecks. But for the—but for the, you know, just the value of the history and—and of the research potential, the shipwrecks are probably more important than a—than a lighthouse from the 1930’s and even, you know, the other lighthouse but—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: —what can I say.
CIOLINO: Um, so how—
LAWSON: Yeah, and we have terrestrial sites too.
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: Uh, the—the—the—which—which we know very little about.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm .
LAWSON: Um, the Southeast Archeological Center finished the project on—with two really cool prehistoric sites, one on Sands Key, one on Totten Key. Um, Sands Key site was, uh, investigated pretty closely by, uh, Bob Carr from, uh, from Miami back right before Andrew and never really finished. So SEAC is re-looking at their—at that work and they’re looking at the work on—at Totten Key and hopefully putting together a lot of good information from those two sites that are going to tell us about the [inaudible] life here, uh, the earliest date we’re going to get real dates from the bottoms of those sites for what is the earliest occupation physically. We know, you know, color—fossil site places outside of the park have some really deep history. But inside the park, honestly, I, as far as I know, until this—until they finish their report and send that stuff, I don’t think there’s anything pre-contact that you could really say for sure.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: But those two sites clearly had it but they don’t know what those dates are yet. Uh, they should wind up with, uh, exhibit quality stuff that can be put into the visitors’ center. But—but those two sites, they’ve been looted too. Uh, I don’t see looting on them—I haven’t ever seen looting on them while I’ve been here but they clearly have been. We have artifacts have been turned over anonymously. Um, yeah, and—and former residents used to bottle hunt for, you know, on those sites, that’s how we—that’s how the Totten Key site was found. An informant, bottle hunter, told archeologists about it in the 80’s. So—
CIOLINO: Cool.
LAWSON: —but the—but for the most part, those sites, uh, we just need to look at them more and oh, and climate change. Sea level rise is going to—is going to wipe them out ultimately just like everything else in south Florida. So there’s that. So what—so but I think the need for those things is the same. They’re going to get wiped out. We need to do some data recovery and learn what we can from them and to date, we haven’t done that much of that. We’ve done some. We’re just waiting for some reports. And there’s probably a good—there’s prob—there will—after those reports are prepared, there will probably be good reason to go back and look at them some more. Just because it’s going to be lost and they have an opportunity to tell us a lot about early folks in Miami.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm. Um, some of the more recent, um, Miami history, I believe you did a project, um, was it with the Virginia Key Beach, doing the ethnographic studies?
LAWSON: No, not Virginia Key.
CIOLINO: Not Virginia Key. Sorry.
LAWSON: Here, this site. Uh, not exactly where we’re sitting but where the visitors’ center is at—
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: —was the, uh, Homestead Bayfront North.
CIOLINO: Thank you. Okay.
LAWSON: So Homestead Bayfront Park is our neighbor, right here, the marina that’s right next door. In 1955 I think, or maybe it was ’58, the county, uh, contracted for the construction of Homestead Bayfront North and referred to the other one as South but everybody just called North the black beach.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: So we had a separate but e—on this—on the headquarters and visitors’ center place, which has been totally, uh, reworked and remodified, the—physically, there’s—physically inside the park, uh, portions of the jetty are date to the—to that—to the black beach and, um, there’s—there’s a place where the entrance road used to be that lead out to the jetty that would’ve been the road during the time period of the black beach. But almost everything else has been reworked, filled so that there’s—physically, there’s basically nothing—
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: —left of it here. But the story is still here. And you can see, it was an atoll beach, just like next door where they, uh, Matheson—Math—uh, Matheson Park to up north of us is another atoll beach where they—they basically built a rock jetty around the—a little—a beach area so that the gross bay water doesn’t come in and ruin the—ruin the sand. And so it was a smaller one here and then the bigger one next door and the segregated beach from when it opened. I think—I think they started working on it in ’55 and it opened in ’58; I’m not sure.
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: And then closed in ’64 when the Civil Rights Act passed. But, uh, what I think is most interesting about it, I mean, there’s lots of interesting stories about it but the—but that is, uh, something I tell people when you want to think about just how devoted the south was to Jim Crow, the—you dri—you can drive three—you can drive like three and-a-half miles, maybe it’s more but basically you go all the way back to the CVS—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: —I think it’s a CVS on the—on the 328th Street and that is where they started the road where you—they segregated the folks coming in. Because that was the first, in 1955, that was the first cross street on this long stretch of nothing that came out to Homestead Bayfront Park. And so that was the first opportunity other than at the gates of the park next to the con—where you could put the road on the other side of the canal. So they built that whole road—
CIOLINO: Wow.
LAWSON: —just so that they could separate black people from everybody else and put them on that other road to come into the park. But, uh, but yeah—
CIOLINO: Oh, sorry.
LAWSON: —we felt a little bit of interpreting that since that project.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: It was a—it was a challenging, uh, uh, eth—ethnography and to prepare because a lot of people have memories of Virginia Key.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: And—and Virginia Key is just recently brought back to life.
CIOLINO: Yeah, you made that—I’m sorry.
LAWSON: Yeah. Well no, that one is the—I mean and—and for real it’s the much more significant site—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —in Miami for—for segregated beaches.
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: But we had one down here but it was hard to get people—it was hard to find folks that remembered—
CIOLINO: Sure.
LAWSON: —the one down here—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: —to talk about it. But for the most part, I think the—the oral history came out and it was like when we did talk to people, people had a good time here.
CIOLINO: Yeah. Mm-hmm
LAWSON: They came to the beach here. So nobody had bad memories of it. It was—it was segregated and it was—
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: —shittier on the north side than it was, you know, it was low and swampy and gross but that’s where people came to have a good time.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Just like they do now.
CIOLINO: Yep. Um, this may be kind of an abstract question but—but I wondered if you could talk about the significance of the Biscayne Cultural Resources Program in a—in a national context, the significance of the, um, underwater, um, site seer in relation to other areas where they’re doing similar work.
LAWSON: Well I think I could point out that—that probably, to my understanding and I don’t really know everything there is to know about everything for sure—
CIOLINO: Okay.
LAWSON: —close but not quite everything there is to know about everything, but I would say that the, I mean, this place, we are the only ones doing underwater archeology in the Park Service. Um, and honestly, in the last couple of years and—and to me this—this is something that changed un—under—under me. We’re doing archeology in this park.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Um, it includes excavation, uh, that is association with, um, uh, documentation, identification, evaluation.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: You know, basic sec—basic phase two of—of—of, uh, section 1, you know, 110 work, survey, inventory and evaluation work.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Um, forever, it was look but don’t—look but don’t touch. And that’s still, I think for the most part, there’s not a whole lot of underwater archeologists that work for the Park Service. There’s a Submerged Resources Center and they spend a lot—they—they got the whole country to look at. There—there is an archeologist I think at, um, uh, well there are archeol—well there’s an archeologist at Channel Islands but I don’t—I don’t know if they have any excavation-type investigations at what—at what they do. Um, there’s somebody at, uh, Isle Royal. Again, I don’t know, uh, the shipwrecks there are a little bit different. You really can just look. They’re in the fresh, you know, freshwater and not as buried—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm.
LAWSON: —and degraded as they are here.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: But, um, but here, for a long time, it was like yeah, there’s a wreck. And like that’s what Jim and Brenda were doing.
CIOLINO: Right.
LAWSON: There’s a wreck. We got the numbers for it, now we go and look at it every year. Most of the time, we find somebody dug a hole in it and we write that down. Who gives a shit about that? I mean, who cares? And that, I mean, that—and—and I mean, that isn’t good enough, even by the—even by our normal standards of evaluation, that’s not good enough.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm.
LAWSON: You know, nobody—nobody goes and finds a—a lithic scatter, uh, goes oh, there’s a lithic scatter and then—and then stops. I mean—I mean, I guess you can. You can—you can do that but not if you really care about archeology. You got to figure out what it is—how old is that lithic scatter, who made that lithic scatter and you can’t do that just by looking at it and in seeing the—the three shipwreck pins that stick out of the sand. So but underwater work is expensive, it’s time consuming, you need—you need lots of resources to do it. But—but this is the perfect place to be using those resources. We have boats—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —we have me, we have, uh, now we have a technician, uh, we didn’t when I first started but we have a technician that helps with the program and we have an endless supply of students who are cl—uh, who will volunteer for free, interns if you can pay them. But there are no—there are very little opportunities to actually excavate in—in an underwater context. So that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s these—these maps around the room are pro—are projects we’ve done over the last couple of years to actually try to figure out something about these wrecks instead of just that they exist.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Which is frustrating to me that, I mean, there’s been a program here since 1996 and I—and I understand that the—in the initial part of that program, it was a very big accomplishment just to get dots on a map.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: But, uh, time to get just a little bit better than just a dot. So I hope it continues after I leave. I hope that whoever they put in here—and a lot of the way that I have been accomplishing that is, uh, through, you know, partnerships, uh, things that I’ve done with professional friends and—and counterparts at ECU, uh, University of West Flor—Eastern Carolina University—
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: —University, University of West Florida. Uh, I hadn’t gotten anybody in here from Texas A and M but I would’ve like to, maybe an intern this coming summer after I’m gone will be from Texas A and M. Um, and—and yeah, and focusing on so far, focusing on sites that have management challenges.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Either like Fowey, we’ve done work on Fowey and we’ve done work on English China because—English China, people keep looting it; Fowey because people keep looting it and it’s, uh, eroding.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: So—so doing eval—evaluative science at the same time and dealing with the management at concern. CIOLINO: Mm-hmm LAWSON: And then the other sites, things like Pacific reef wreck, Pillar Dollar, Soldier Key wreck. Soldier Key Wreck was a bit of a management issue. Well they all—they all are. They have erosion issues associated with the fact that somebody looted the hell out of them already and dug them up and exposed things. So we’ve done—we’ve done projects where we dig them up too. We dig them right back up again, just the way the other folks did and—but then we record everything that’s there and make efforts to rightful, you know, full site assessments, identify the wrecks if we can. Um, pro—we were pretty close on English China and we got Soldier Key within a couple of ships. But it—it—it hurts when there’s no artifacts left.
CIOLINO: Oh.
LAWSON: Because the last guys who dug it up take all the artifacts. So it gets— it’s—it gets challenging to say which one of these 10 shipwrecks that happened in this three-year period could be at all were potentially the same when there’s no artifacts to determine—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —what they were carrying.
CIOLINO: That ship carriage, yeah.
LAWSON: That’s why we’re in a little closer I think on, uh, English China because it has artifacts on it.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: Um, but yeah, I finished my thought on that. Anyway, I would—I would like to see that—that kind of stuff continue. And I—the other thing that needs to happen and—and it hasn’t so much yet is that those documents that we’re creating, we need to find a way to get them into the public. Uh, I’d like to do it on the website with all these stupid challenges with the asinine Park Service website issues and no—I mean, pretend like they care about millennials and then have a website that has restrictions on it akin to 1997 for how much data you—you can’t link to anything. I mean, it’s nonsense. But, I mean, anyway, so that kind of thing, you work that out so that we can start like pushing, for people who are interested anyway—
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: —in what historic archeology on shipwrecks looks like.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: Make—getting those technical reports and things out where folks can see it and then, uh, the other thing that Brenda did and well almost did and then finished up was the Heritage Trail.
CIOLINO: That’s my next question. Yeah.
LAWSON: Yeah. We have two different kinds of shipwrecks basically in—in this game. We have the archeology wrecks and we have mar—and I mean, the maritime is without a doubt archeology too. But we have these big hardened shipwrecks that everybody knows about where we encourage people to go and experience a shipwreck. And that’s scuba dive, snorkel, little bit different from shipwrecks that people go to in the Keys that are usually, um, artificial reefs, not historic wrecks. People probably would go to historic wrecks in the Keys if they existed because they have all been totally devastated by treasure hunting. There’s nothing to see at them anymore. So but here, it’s still—there’s still some hulks down there in the—and they’re all, you know, pretty, they have fish and everything too. So—so when people call me and they say, oh, I want a shipwreck, uh, where can I go? There’s the Heritage Trail, you can point people at the Heritage Trail. And then sometimes people call and say, you’re hiding all the shipwrecks. And I go, no, I’m not. Go to the Heritage Trail. And these sites that we’ve like looked at real close and pretty much figured out nobody can really wreck them.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: So they have mooring balls to protect the sites and—and, uh, yeah, so it’s kind of a—it’s important because they’re beautiful and they’re nice dive—dive sites and people like them. Plaques and everything down in the bottom tells the story of the shipwreck, if you encounter it, you know, and, uh, but, uh, but they’re also a relief valve for the archeology here because we’re simply not going to tell people where English China is or where the Populo is where the Fowey is because even the best intended people, once somebody else—I mean, it only takes one person to destroy these things one afternoon. So can’t tell them.
CIOLINO: Yeah.
LAWSON: Just can’t. So but you can, you know, go to the Heritage Trail. Perfect.
CIOLINO: Chuck, you’ve answered most of my questions before I’ve actually asked them, which is fantastic. But the one thing that I would like you, if you don’t mind, talk about, um, you were the recent recipient of the Appleman-Judd-Lewis Award for—
LAWSON: Yeah.
CIOLINO: —significant contributions to the culture resources field. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to talk about the project that you received that award for please.
LAWSON: Well—
CIOLINO: And you can show the award if you would like to.
LAWSON: Here it is. Won’t show up very good on the camera—
CIOLINO: No, it won’t—
LAWSON: —but it’s right there.
CIOLINO: —because it’s glass. There you go.
LAWSON: But, um, actually, I didn’t really get it for a project. I was nominated for basically this whole program.
CIOLINO: The whole program, okay.
LAWSON: And so kind of what I was just talking about is the reason I got that award. The, you know, doing stuff and I have—I will give advice to any—anybody who thinks that that’s impressive and would like to get one and you’re in a park and you’re—whatever kind of program you’re managing, you’re in a park. The best thing that you can do is get out of people’s way. And if somebody’s got a good idea, facilitate them to the best that you can and otherwise, let, you know, let good people do good stuff. Don’t settle into the every day is the same day in a park and that, you know, oh, I got to do this submission, that submission and now we do the condition assessment, blah. It—it—like, you know, if you want—if you want to see something get done, fine. So and—and you can find somebody who will run it. I think—well I mean, most of those projects are—I ran those projects, the shipwreck projects. But I did them with the park, with the SRC.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: With SEAC. Uh, professors from ECU and their students, whole field schools. Um, interns, the Soldier Key wreck, which is probably—it’s a rel—it was a relatively small, uh, project but it’s one of the ones I’m most proud of because it’s—it’s a site that when I—when I first got here, I lo—I went and visited every site. It took me all summer to just see everything and see what it looked like. And when I got to this one, it was just a bunch of, uh, drift pins, the pins in the keel of the ship sticking up out of the sand. And then to both sides of the sand were all the ballast stones. I’m like, who the hell excavated this site? It had clearly been dug up; all the—all the stuff was out of it to both sides and then it filled back in with sand. So I figured it out. It had been dug up right before it was made part of the—it’s in the expansion area, right before it was part of the park. Uh, the state of Florida gave a permit to basically an English professor at UM to run field school there. And he collected all the artifacts, dug up—dug it up for two seasons. The artifacts all disappeared. Gave them away to people I guess, never wrote anything up and just left the site exposed. Then Hurricane Andrew came and blew away half of the site because it was exposed. So the work that we ultimately did after I figured out that there was never hope of getting any information from what had been previously done was, like I said, we dug it back up and looked at what was there, compared it to what we did get from the previous excavations was a—a volunteer’s photo, uh, book—book of photos. Book of—no, just like, uh, snapshots like from a—
CIOLINO: Slides?
LAWSON: No. You know, it—pictures. They’re like from—from a vacation. What do you call that, a photo book— CIOLINO: Album.
LAWSON: Photo album. Yeah, we don’t have those anymore. Photo album, an old photo album so we could see what the wreck sort of looked like in some of these pictures. But, uh, like half of it, you know, gone because it had been left exposed. It would still be there if they had just—you know, and it would still be there if that dude had just put the rocks back. I mean and ultimately, that was all we did was put the rocks back. So we dug it up and we documented what was there and we put the rocks back. The putting the rocks back part took a day. And since then, I mean, it’s buried now, the sand is captured in those rocks. It’s under the sand mostly, some of the ballast sticks up but I mean, but like I said, I’m proud of that project because we did, I mean, we did something and it didn’t take much.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: But that’s—that’s what it is. That’s what that was. It was just an old bunch of—it was just a long list of doing stuff. The lighthouse is in there too but like I said, I’m not sure I should’ve gotten credit for that one. It’s kind of a—
CIOLINO: So—
LAWSON: Doing stuff, letting stuff happen. Helping other people do good stuff.
CIOLINO: Yeah. Um, with all the work that you’ve done and the passion that you’ve put into this program and this area, what are your hopes for the future of the culture resources program at Biscayne?
LAWSON: Well I guess fine someone—I’m—I’m attached to this program. It’s time to move on, so I’m moving on. Most of—I wish luck to the person who lives—who has to live in south Florida because that—I mean, I knew that coming into this job, that I could—that I wouldn’t make it forever because I just—I just don’t like south Florida. The water is good, I mean, I think that’s the reason for living—it’s the reason for living here. Unfortunately, most of Miami doesn’t even experience the water. So those people have no reason for living here; I don’t know why they do it. But the—but, uh, the waters, they can only attract you for so long and you know, somebody—the other thing is like some of the stuff, I’ve—what I—what I most hope for the future is that—is that they can—is that my replacement or that this program continues to move forward with—with quality evaluative science on—on the sites. The—the terrestrial sites, the underwater sites, they continue to regularly produce quality information. Because, you know, something—the Florida Keys has got tons of shipwrecks. But honestly, there isn’t a single decent archeological report from anywhere in the Keys because all this treasure hunting and most of it has been done for decades. You know, they—nobody is even looking. The Marine Sanctuary has treasure hunters that—and that’s it. So there—but I mean, it’s the Gulf Stream. It’s the—it was the route from—from all of Spanish—the Spanish, it’s the Spanish main. It’s everybody is here. These wrecks are from every country, from every time period from contact all the way to yesterday. And there’s really nobody doing any, other than here, there’s really nobody doing any archeology. And definitely nobody supporting it. You know, if you want to do something else, you’re going to have to—the Park Service isn’t going to help you, boats, dredges, uh, what—what I have set up here. So I hope that that continues, that there’s still—that Biscayne is looked at as a place to do research because that was not going on before I came. It was locked down and hidden from everyone and well but there was nothing—not much to hide because nobody was really doing any research anyway.
CIOLINO: Sure.
LAWSON: They were just looking at sites over and over again and not doing anything. So I hope that continues. And then the other thing is and maybe it would be the best thing ever that I left is maybe somebody else will be more successful with that lighthouse than me because, uh, what it needs is a public benefactor, somebody with deep pockets who just wants to help fix that thing because Park Service isn’t going to be able to do it. At least not in the current climate.
CIOLINO: Mm-hmm
LAWSON: So hopefully somebody who’s better at that than me. Because that would be—I would be impressed by the development like that if I’m replaced by somebody who can make something happen for the Fowey light. What else?
CIOLINO: Yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to capture?
LAWSON: I don’t think so.
CIOLINO: Okay. Okay.
LAWSON: Good?
CIOLINO: Yeah. Thank you. [End of audio]
Description
Charles “Chuck” Lawson was the archaeologist and cultural resource manager at Biscayne National Park. In this interview, Lawson speaks about his major projects at Biscayne including the transfer of Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, underwater, and terrestrial archaeology. Lawson also speaks about the challenges he faced in writing interpretational material about the historically segregated beaches like Virginia Key. Interviewed by Bonnie Ciolino on February 21, 2017.
Credit
Biscayne National Park
Date Created
02/21/2017
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