In Charlotte Harbor, Ponce de Leon encountered an urban Indian culture more than 200 years old. The Caloosas were city dwellers whose sea-oriented, high, dry, airy rectangular dwelling mounds made pleasant and secure homesites. Skillful engineers, they surrounded their terraced mounds with kitchen garden courts, waterways and boat basins, and ramps, causeways, and ponds where live fish and shellfish were stored. Shell-paved causeways and canals connected the living city to mound cities for the dead and to midden mounds where waste was discarded. The tallest mounds held temples, storehouses, and the homes of their leaders.