The Ancient Story Behind Siesta Key's Cool White Sand

Siesta Key's sand started its journey in the Appalachian Mountains. Here is why it is so white, so soft and so cool under your feet.

Kick off your sandals on Siesta Beach on a hot afternoon and you will notice something strange: the sand is not hot. That is because it is almost pure quartz, roughly 99 percent by most measurements, and quartz reflects sunlight instead of soaking it up.

Geologists trace that quartz back to the Appalachian Mountains. Over an almost unimaginable stretch of time, rain and rivers wore the mountains down and carried tiny crystals south toward the Gulf. Along the way the softer minerals broke apart and washed off, leaving fine, rounded grains of quartz that feel like powdered sugar and even squeak a little when you walk on them.

People have loved this coast for thousands of years. Long before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, Indigenous communities lived around Sarasota Bay, fishing, gathering shellfish and building large shell mounds called middens. At Historic Spanish Point in nearby Osprey you can still walk among middens that archaeologists date back roughly 5,000 years.

So when you build a sandcastle here, you are building with grains that have been traveling for ages. Not a bad thought to hold while the sun goes down.

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