The Fort Walton Temple Mound is the original earth temple mound built by prehistoric people who lived here between A.D. 700 and A.D. 1500 as a political and religious center. It served as the base for a temple building that was the residence of the leader, a focal point for ceremonies and events, and a gathering place for dances, games, and public occasions. Thought to be one of the largest human-made prehistoric earthworks on salt water, the mound is a truncated pyramid measuring 223 by 220 feet at the base, 90 by 150 feet at the summit, about 1 square acre at the base, and approximately 12 feet high, made from local sand, shell, and clay. It was built here because of reliable fresh water and abundant seafood, and mounds also symbolized the importance of the person living on the summit and tending the sacred fire. Many mounds were aligned to the primary points of the compass and may have been on lines of magnetic force. Constructed in stages as each leader added a new temple structure, the mound probably began around A.D. 700 and was most likely completed by A.D. 1500, with its height of use in the late 1400s just before Spanish explorers reached Florida. Built entirely by hand without beasts of burden or wheeled vehicles, it contains about 100,000 cubic feet of earth carried in baskets of around 50 pounds, requiring 200,000 or more loads. The mound once stood at the center of a city, with a ramp on the south side providing the only access to the summit, an open plaza for games at the base, ceremonial houses bordering the plaza, and shared smoke racks, granaries, storage areas, food-processing areas, medicine-preparation areas, ritual spaces, burial areas, private houses, and separate men's and women's houses. Its builders were part of the Mississippian Time Period, living in permanent villages with large populations sustained largely by fishing and farming, with complex systems of goods redistribution and specialized art and industry. Because they left no written history, their own name is unknown; scientists call them the Fort Walton Culture because early traces of their distinctive way of life were found at this mound and village. Mound building in the southeastern United States ended abruptly for reasons not fully explained, and when Europeans arrived, Native American people living around the mounds were not themselves Mound Builders, though some historic southeastern tribes, including the Creek Indians in the Florida panhandle, are descendants of mound-building groups. Excavations show that a building stood here in prehistoric times, though archaeologists usually find only traces such as beams, post impressions, floor surfaces, and pits. The temple replica created in 1976 represents the possible size and shape of the former structure. The community leader, a hereditary member of the elite class who received tribute and favor, likely lived in the temple structure, though it is unknown whether such high-ranking figures were chiefs, religious officers, or both. Excavations in surrounding areas also indicate houses about 15 feet long and 30 feet wide, built with pole walls set in trenches and stabilized with shells, dirt, and clay, with clay and Spanish moss filling cracks, one-room interiors possibly divided by reed mats, sleeping benches around the walls, and grass-thatched roofs that were wind, water, and storm resistant.