John Saxer is on a quest. And like many men with spotty pasts and wild theories, he's not taken very seriously.
Saxer, a bicycle mechanic and bartender, is something of a local gadfly in Tarpon Springs.
For four years, the 55-year-old has tried to convince city officials, archaeologists, journalists — anybody who would listen — that this small town on the Gulf of Mexico is the original Garden of Eden.
He bases his theory, in part, on hundreds of boulders scattered in and around Tarpon Springs that have mysterious, seemingly man-made holes bored through them.
On this balmy day in the tiny town of Holiday, Saxer is rattling off his theory as I stand in front of a 5-foot-tall rock, probably weighing a ton, with a hole running right through the middle.
I have to admit: The boulder is intriguing.
Could the stone's aperture be a natural occurrence, perhaps the result of water erosion? A primitive basketball hoop? Whale glory hole?
The rocks have puzzled Saxer, too, ever since he moved to Tarpon Springs 12 years ago. While working as a limo driver, he kept passing one such boulder perched on the corner of a lawn in Holiday.
"I kept thinking, 'What is that hole doing in that rock?'" he recalls. "It would taunt me."
After noticing similarly shaped rocks in the area, Saxer, a University of Wisconsin graduate, began researching online. He concluded that the Tarpon Springs rocks looked similar to stone anchors found in the Mediterranean and the Middle East believed to be used by ancient civilizations like the Romans and Carthaginians. The rocks' appearance here, Saxer theorizes, proves an ancient civilization must have used Tampa Bay as a seaport. By conflating Greek and Biblical mythology with his observations of Tarpon Springs' landscape, Saxer has convinced himself that Tarpon Springs is the oldest seaport in the world and the center of the Garden of Eden.
"I might only be a bike mechanic," he says, "but at this point I'm the most important archaeologist in the world."
Saxer hasn't found any credible people to back up his Garden of Eden theory, but two years ago, a California archaeologist did study several of the Tarpon Springs boulders and concluded they were similar to ancient stone anchors.
Other archaeologists disagree.
After reviewing a photo of one of the rocks, Florida State University professor Cheryl Ward concludes the stone is too large to be an anchor.
"The distribution of weight in its shape is unwieldy and unmanageable for the type of craft that would be using stone anchors," she writes in an e-mail to CL.
But if they aren't anchors, what are they?
"I don't know the exact origins of any of them," admits New Port Richey public works director Sherman Applegate. One of the boulders that sits on city land on the median of Dailey Road has been there ever since he began working for the city 20 years ago.
"It's not uncommon during utility excavations to come across these types of rocks," he notes. Roger Smith, Florida's underwater archaeologist, suggests the rocks could be natural formations.
"Limestone rocks with holes in them are not uncommon," he says.
Saxer is not ready to give up easily. He is on a quest.
"They haven't made the jump," he says about the archaeologists. "They only see the rocks here and not the ramifications." He pauses. "And the ramifications are huge."
The last boulder Saxer shows me stands among other rocks in front of Rexel Datacom Products, an electrical supply company on Gulf Drive in New Port Richey. Saxer says the rock, if proven to be archaeologically significant, is "priceless."
That perked up some ears at Rexel, which uncovered the rock while excavating a well.
"If someone would like to come and appraise [the rock], that'd be great," says an employee. "Especially with the economy how it is, we could use the money."
Learn more about John Saxer's Garden of Eden theories by attending his weekly talks on Sundays at Muggler's Celtic Coffee, 9 S. Safford Ave., Tarpon Springs.
This article appears in May 14-20, 2008.