Lee County Highpoint Trip Report

Date: January 23, 2006
Author: Dave Covill

Lee County remains an elusive goal to county highpointers. There are approximately 100 closed contours of 30+ feet and none of 35+ feet. Some of these extend beyond an entire section! There are a dozen or more spot elevations of 31 feet to even as high as 38 feet but, alas, these represent man-made berms along highways, etc. I have been there and checked all of them out. There are a few spot elevations in the 31-34 foot range that appear to be natural ground. These tend to be clustered on the eastern edge of the county.

Click here to see this is the approximate center of an area with a 4+ mile radius that contains some or all of the ground above 30 feet in the county. I have created a huge paper map, with all the contours numbered (1-100). If anyone wishes to borrow it, I would be happy to mail it to them in a tube. I created a similar map for Miami-Dade FL and Mike Schwartz is in possession of it at the moment.

In my opinion, a CoHPer will need to visit each of these closed contours and at least get into the center of them and roam a bit in the larger ones to reasonably be able to claim the county. Some of these are in very swampy ground. A person would need to go there during the dry season of a very dry year. Do you remember about 5 years ago there were numerous grassfires in FL in the winter? That would have been the time to go. Will I do it someday? Perhaps, but there's lots of other fun things to do in life in lieu of traipsing around in a FL swamp. Lee FL may well be the most challenging CoHP remaining in the lower 48.