Mother Nature has a way of revealing secrets that were never meant to be found.
Sometimes those secrets are buried treasure or lost artifacts that rewrite the history books.
And Hurricane Ian unearthed one mysterious wooden canoe that has experts completely stumped three years later.
Hurricane Ian’s unexpected archaeological gift
When Hurricane Ian tore through Southwest Florida in September 2022, it left behind a trail of devastation that took months to clean up.
But hidden among the debris and destruction was something extraordinary that nobody saw coming.
Cleanup crews in Fort Myers discovered a wooden canoe that would soon have archaeologists scratching their heads and asking questions they still can’t answer.
The Florida Division of Historical Resources took possession of the mysterious 9-foot vessel and spent three years trying to solve its puzzle.
What they found only deepened the mystery.
The canoe’s construction is unlike anything researchers have seen in Florida before, leading them to believe it might not be from the Sunshine State at all.
"The canoe’s form is highly unusual in Florida and research is still ongoing to determine its origin," state officials announced in September 2024.¹
The design similarities to Caribbean vessels suggest this dugout canoe traveled a very long way to end up buried in Fort Myers soil.
The mahogany mystery gets even stranger
After months of investigation, wood specialists delivered results that stunned everyone involved in the research.
The canoe was carved from mahogany – making it potentially the first recorded mahogany canoe ever found in Florida.
"After investigation by a respected wood anatomist, it seems that the canoe is made of mahogany!" researchers announced in September 2024.²
But here’s where things get really interesting.
Mahogany only grows naturally in two places that could be connected to this canoe – the northern Florida Keys and the Everglades, or throughout the Caribbean islands.
The problem is that nobody can figure out which location provided the wood for this ancient vessel.
If it came from South Florida, that’s one mystery.
If it traveled from the Caribbean, that opens up entirely different questions about early maritime travel and cultural connections that historians never knew existed.
What experts think they’re really looking at
The research team believes this canoe might actually be what’s called a "cayuco" – a specialized dugout boat used for river and coastal navigation in Hispanic countries.
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Cayucos weren’t some weekend hobby project – somebody spent months hollowing out a massive mahogany log by hand.
Think about that for a second.
You’re talking about skilled craftsmen who knew exactly what they were doing, carving out a vessel tough enough to handle island-hopping in rough Caribbean waters.
So who built this thing? When? And how the hell did it end up buried in a Fort Myers backyard waiting for Ian to dig it up?
Here’s what nobody’s talking about
You want to know what makes this whole thing fascinating?
Florida’s archaeological record is constantly revealing connections to the Caribbean and South America that most people never learned about in school.
This summer alone, a fisherman stumbled across what appears to be a 19th-century rum-running ship.³
Earlier this year, researchers uncovered British colonial structures in St. Augustine that shed new light on 18th-century history.⁴
The pattern is clear – Florida’s coast was a major highway for maritime traffic long before anyone kept detailed records.
This mahogany canoe represents the kind of cross-cultural exchange and long-distance travel that was happening centuries before modern transportation made it routine.
What’s really remarkable is how Hurricane Ian’s destruction revealed something that might never have been found otherwise.
The storm essentially conducted an archaeological dig across thousands of acres, bringing artifacts to the surface that had been buried for generations.
For researchers who spend their careers looking for clues about Florida’s hidden history, Hurricane Ian delivered a gift that keeps on giving.
The canoe is now fully conserved and ready for display, but the mystery of its origins continues to challenge everything experts thought they knew about early maritime culture in the region.
That’s the thing about real archaeology – every answer leads to three new questions.
And this mysterious mahogany canoe just opened up a whole new chapter in Florida’s story that nobody saw coming.
¹ Florida Division of Historical Resources, "Hurricane Ian Canoe Update," Facebook, September 12, 2024.
² Florida Division of Historical Resources, "Canoe Wood Analysis Results," Facebook, September 18, 2024.
³ Andrea Margolis, "Mysterious wooden canoe found after Hurricane Ian still baffles experts three years later," Fox News, October 8, 2025.
⁴ Ibid.
