HISTORY & HERITAGE
Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park
Citrus County · Gulf Coast
A 40-foot limestone chimney and the gears of a steam mill, left from a 5,000-acre sugar plantation worked by enslaved people.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
David Levy Yulee sat on Florida's Territorial Legislative Council and went on to serve in both the United States House and Senate after statehood. He also owned a 5,000-acre sugar plantation at Homosassa, and this small park is what is left of its mill. Enslaved workers tended that plantation, cultivated the cane and ground it here. The mill ran from 1851 to 1864 and supplied sugar to Southern troops through the Civil War. What still stands is a limestone masonry chimney forty feet high, the iron gears that a steam boiler once drove, and a cane press, the remains of a steam-driven mill rather than a picturesque ruin. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places. A loop of about a fifth of a mile takes you around the interpreted remains under a dense canopy of ancient live oaks, and there is a picnic grove with a shelter, tables and grills by the parking area. It opens from eight in the morning until sunset, every day of the year, and there is no fee to go in
Keep comparing