Welcome to the Jupiter Inlet District
Jupiter Inlet & the Loxahatchee River
History
River and Inlet: A Dynamic and Enduring System
In 1884, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey sounded the waters of the lower Loxahatchee River and Jupiter Inlet. One product was a hydrographic compilation sheet (also called "smooth sheet" or H-sheet), a map of the soundings. Concurrently, other parties surveyed the shoreline and mapped the land cover as far inland as could be seen from the deck of a ship, to produce a terrestrial map (T-sheet). Selected information from the H- and T-sheets would be later combined to produce nautical charts. Although few such charts remain from the 19th century, the National Ocean Service has carefully archived the H- and T-sheets.
This map is a portion of sheet H-1604a, which shows the river and inlet. The soundings are in feet, relative to mean low water (average low tide). The mapped margin of the Loxahatchee Central Embayment, a low-energy area not subject to swift tidal currents and ocean storm waves, is almost identical to today's shoreline. However, Jupiter Inlet, in a high-energy environment, is very different on the map, with its mouth well south of the present, stabilized, location. The inset enlarges a portion of the Central Embayment to better show the map's level of detail.