Talk:List of Florida's highest points

Sugarloaf Mtn. near Ferndale/Howey in the Hills, FL (N 28.64853 W 81.73153) is higher at approx 308'

Removal of non-mountain items

ben is amazing :) Ben s Tower of Terror, Spaceship Earth, etc. I did this for two reasons:

1. Because this should be a list of highest geographical points
2. Even considering non-geographical objects, there are building far taller than anything Disney has, so they wouldn't have a place on the list anyway

I did leave the Disney mountains, but I labelled them as "man-made" to distinguish them from actual geographical objects.

If anyone has any objection, I've opened up the discussion. Justin The Claw 02:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I recommend removal of all man-made Disney names because I feel the list should be of natural features and there are skyscrapers in major Florida cities that are higher than the Disney "mountains". S Martin 17:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Ben is awesome, amazing, funny, Shaman is funny

Highest point in Florida?

There are several artificial hill/mounds east of Tampa Bay, near Mulberry. At least one is 350' plus, according to Google Earth.Chasrob (talk) 00:24, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This brings up an interesting point to the discussion above. I believe we should also include man-made hills if they are geographical, (i.e. not structures like the Disney "mountains") possibly to include the ground elevation of Disney itself, a very broad artificial hill with a peak at the foot of Cinderella's Palace in the Magic Kingdom, if I remember correctly. I'd like to hear someone else's thoughts on this as to validity and research plausibility. Thanks! Vocor (talk) 04:03, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

One possibility could be to add a new column to the table, with an option to sort by 'natural' or 'artificial'. Another possibility is to just make a separate section and list for the artificial points.

As to researching man made landforms, I'm sure it should not be too difficult to obtain DEMs or LiDAR terrain models for Florida. Actually, probably could just hit up the SRTM data (http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/SRTM3/) for large features. **Note: Google Earth's elevations are derived from SRTM, which are orthometric heights referenced to the EGM96 geoid. The USGS and U.S. state/federal agencies in general tend to use the NGVD29 elevation datum, so any elevation values from SRTM/Google Earth should be converted to NGVD for consistency, or at least be noted as being sourced from SRTM. I recommend NOAA's free VDatum software to make the elevation transformation if anyone is feeling ambitious. Lithium6ion (talk) 07:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

IMO, man-made hills, in this case, would qualify for this list. I'm not familiar with the SRTM, but according to Google Earth, Britton Hill is at 347', within a couple of feet of the measurement on this list. The artificial hill I was talking about, at 27° 49' 01.78"N and 82° 01' 55.82"W, is 355' via Google Earth.

Apparently, the hill is a phosphate mine owned by a Mosaic company.Chasrob (talk) 23:48, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

That brings up an interesting point. I have to imagine that the hill you noted is not exactly a permanent feature since it exists as part of a presumably active mining operation. For all I know it may not exist anymore, or its height could have been altered. I do strongly believe that if any artificial hills are included, they should be permanent/finished constructions. Good examples would be middens, such Turtle Mound and Mount Elizabeth, and reclaimed/capped landfills, such as Monarch Hill aka Mount Trashmore. Lithium6ion (talk) 00:06, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Good point about the how permanent the mound/hill is. Unfortunately I don't know the status of those mines, 'tho they are enormous and could be getter bigger and higher. They've been there since at least 1994, and the northernmost of the pair has vegetation growing on it.Chasrob (talk) 16:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

According to the EPA (see here, check out 'Stacks' section), any phosphogypsum stack with a pond on top is still active. So even the northern of the pair you point out is probably still growing as of the date this photo was taken. Side Note: Apparently these stacks of phosophogypsum are somewhat radioactive, as the phosphate extraction process concentrates uranium and radium in the mine waste. Lithium6ion (talk) 02:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Very interesting pages. I would guess that the "stacks" are semi-permanent, aren't they? If they are bulldozed down, for example, they would scatter radioactive ingredients and cause an uproar with the EPA, correct?Chasrob (talk) 16:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems like in the end the stacks are ultimately capped in some way and then allowed to dehydrate. Final height is dependent on the amount of water that ultimately bleeds out, which apparently takes many years. (Note that bleed water has to be initially contained on site, with releases to the environment regulated.) There is a paper here that talks about closing a stack operated by Cargill. The subject stack settled 18 inches in its first year after capping (though it was originally estimated to settle 10 feet over 40 years). As the paper points out, a closed stack is still very dynamic. Lithium6ion (talk) 18:19, 8 February 2013 (UTC)