cana_hrs.book

Canaveral National Seashore

Historic Resource Study

September 2008

written by Susan Parker

edited by Robert W. Blythe

Cultural Resources Division

Southeast Regional Office

National Park Service

100 Alabama Street, SW

Atlanta, Georgia 30303

404.562.3117

This historic resource study exists in two formats. A printed

version is available for study at the Southeast Regional

Office of the National Park Service and at a variety of other

repositories around the United States. For more widespread

access, this administrative history also exists as a PDF

through the web site of the National Park Service. Please

visit www.nps.gov for more information.

Canaveral National Seashore

212 S. Washington Street

Titusville, FL 32796

http://www.nps.gov/cana

Canaveral National Seashore

Historic Resource Study

National Park Service v

Contents

Acknowledgements - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - vii

Chapter 1: Introduction - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1

Establishment of Canaveral National Seashore - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1

Physical Environment of the Seashore - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2

Background History of the Area - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2

Scope and Purpose of the Historic Resource Study - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3

Historical Contexts and Themes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 4

Chapter Two: Climatic Change: Rising Water Levels and Prehistoric Human

Occupation, ca. 12,000 BCE - ca. 1500 CE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 7

Associated Properties - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10

Seminole Rest - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10

Turtle Mound- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11

Castle Windy - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11

Ross Hammock Burial Mound 1- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11

Ross Hammock Burial Mound 2- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11

Max Hoeck Burial Mound - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 12

Bill’s Hill Burial Mound - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 12

National Register Eligibility- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 12

Chapter Three: European Incursions and Euro-American Expansion, 1500-1820 - 13

Contact-Period Native American Groups in the Seashore Area - - - - - - - - - - - - - 15

Early European Settlement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -17

The French Attempt to Settle in Florida - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 17

Spanish Missions and Native Americans - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 20

Defending Spanish Florida - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 25

The Seminole - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -26

British Florida: Large Enterprise Grants and Small Homestead Grants - - - - - - - - - -27

Turnbull’s New Smyrna - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 29

Mount Plenty - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 30

William Elliot Plantation - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 30

Bartram and Michaux - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 33

Land Grants and Disrupted Settlement in the Second Spanish Period - - - - - - - - - -34

Spanish Land Grants Around Canaveral - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 35

The Patriots War - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 37

Associated Properties - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 39

Turtle Mound- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 39

Elliott Plantation (Sugar Mill Ruins and Stobbs Farm) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 40

Kings Road - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 40

William Bartram Markers (One and Two)- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 40

National Register Eligibility- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 40

Chapter Four: Transportation Networks, 1820 to 1950 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 41

Florida as a United States Territory - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 41

The Civil War - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -45

Transportation and Public Lands - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -48

U. S. Life-Saving Service - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 50

vi Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Water and Rail Lines Converge - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -53

Automobiles and Highways - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -54

Associated Properties - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -58

Old Haulover Canal - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 58

New Haulover Canal - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 58

Confederate Salt Works - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 58

National Register Eligibility- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 58

Chapter Five: Population Growth After Wars, 1845 to 1950 - - - - - - - - - - - - 61

Live Oak Harvesting - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -61

Citrus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -63

The Postwar Citrus Surge, Other Subtropical Crops, and the People to Grow Them - - -65

In-migration and Out-migration - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -67

Eldora - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -71

Seminole Rest - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -76

Associated Properties - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -78

Eldora - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 78

Seminole Rest (at Snyder’s Mound) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 80

Registration Requirement/Criteria Considerations/Integrity - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 81

Chapter Six: The Aerospace Program, 1950 to 1975 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 83

Land for the U.S. Space Program - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -84

Canaveral National Seashore - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -86

Associated Properties - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -87

Chapter Seven: Recommendations- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89

Historic and Prehistoric Resources - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -89

Turtle Mound- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89

André Michaux Historical Marker- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89

Escaped Slave Route - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89

Elliott Plantation and Sugar Mill Ruins - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 89

Kings Road - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 90

Old Haulover Portage and Canal - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 90

New Haulover Canal - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 90

Confederate Salt Works - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 91

Eldora - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 91

Seminole Rest- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 91

Documentary Sources and Research - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -92

Early Colonial Intercultural and Interracial Relationships and Activities Within the Seashore - 92

Elliott Plantation and Sugar Mill Ruins - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 92

Kings Road - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 92

Daily Life in the Seashore in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries - - - - - - - - - 92

Documents Relating to Live-Oak Harvesting from the 1820s to the 1850s - - - - - - - - - - - 92

Bibliography - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 93

National Park Service vii

Acknowledgements

This study is part of an ongoing effort by the NPS Southeast Regional Office’s Cultural Resources Division

to provide baseline historical documentation for the region’s parks. Many people contributed to this study,

but we wish to especially thank Dr. Daniel Schafer, Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the History

Department, University of North Florida, who graciously provided a summary of his findings on the Elliott

plantation for inclusion in this document. Much of the information has only recently been uncovered

during his research in Great Britain, and his work played a major role in initiating an archeological investi-

gation of the site. Information on the Kings Road extension from New Smyrna to the Elliott plantation was

provided by Dot Moore of the Florida Anthropological Society and Roz Foster of the North Brevard Her-

itage Foundation. Roz Foster also helped document Clifton school, Haulover Canal, and the community of

Allenhurst, and she is the source for several historic photographs. John "Kip" Hulvershorn deserves special

mention for the task of sifting through many contacts, databases, files, and websites to track down the illus-

trations. Gary Luther and Harlan Hutchins of the Southeast Volusia Historical Society also supplied historic

photos and were indispensable for their knowledge of local history.

Three members of the Seashore’s staff should receive mention. Bruce Rosel provided detailed information

on the renovation of the Seminole Rest buildings and Reid Miller, a former interpreter at the Seashore and

now with the U.S. Forest Service, offered many constructive leads, comments, and little-known infor-

mation, especially pertaining to the history of Eldora. Reid also reviewed the initial drafts and at his urging

the document was revised to become more specific to the park area. His timely encouragement when the

project became prolonged was especially helpful. Finally, John Stiner, the park’s resource management spe-

cialist, was tireless in his commitment to the project and his willingness to respond to questions and

requests for information. Without him, there would have been significant gaps and errors in the study.

Finally, Bob Blythe, former chief of the history branch of the Cultural Resources Division, kept the project

moving, even after he left the National Park Service and moved to France, and added more park-specific

information.

viii Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

National Park Service 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

The 57,661 acres of Canaveral National Seashore

(“the Seashore”) are located on the Atlantic coast of

Florida approximately 25 miles south of Daytona

Beach and a bit more than 50 miles east of Orlando.

The Seashore has lands in both Brevard and Volusia

Counties. The communities of Edgewater and New

Smyrna Beach are just beyond the Seashore’s

northern boundary, Oak Hill adjoins the Seashore

on the northwest, and Titusville lies just west of the

southern boundary. Along the eastern edge of the

Seashore is a narrow ribbon of barrier island.

Behind the island’s dunes, the estuary of Mosquito

Lagoon washes the banks of the oceanfront island

and of Merritt Island to the west, which is actually a

peninsula extending south from Oak Hill and sepa-

rated from the mainland by Indian River.

Canaveral National Seashore was authorized by the

Congress in the Act of January 3, 1975 (P.L. 93-

626). A general statement of the Seashore’s purpose

is included in Section 1 of the Act:

That in order to preserve and protect the

outstanding natural, scenic, scientific, ecologic,

and historic values of certain lands, shoreline,

and waters of the State of Florida and to provide

for public outdoor recreation use and enjoyment

of the same, there is hereby established the

Canaveral National Seashore.

The Seashore evolved out of lands acquired by the

Federal government for the purpose of housing the

facilities for its aerospace program at Cape

Canaveral. A belt of vacant lands around the facil-

ities was needed for safety and security, so that

today these lands are available for public recreation

unless required by the aerospace program.

Establishment of

Canaveral National

Seashore

Although the needs of the space program may have

been the immediate spur in the creation of the Sea-

shore, the national seashore initiative dates to the

1930s. As the NPS underwent substantial expansion

after 1933, serious thought was given for the first

time to setting aside undeveloped portions of the

nation’s seashore as units of the National Park

System, but prior to the country’s entry into World

War II, only Cape Hatteras National Seashore had

been authorized. The rapid commercial devel-

opment of beach communities following the war

prompted the NPS in 1954 to undertake another

survey to identify “outstanding stretches” of rela-

tively undeveloped coastline in the eastern United

States. Some 126 areas were examined, with 16

identified as having the highest priority for acqui-

sition by the government. The Mosquito Lagoon

area that later became Canaveral National Seashore

was among the 16. The report noted that the 24

miles of undeveloped beach, with vegetation

approaching “the natural and primeval” were a rare

commodity in Florida and that the area possessed

great potential for recreation. Designation of the

seashore did not occur, however, until after the vast

expansion of the U.S. space program in the 1960s.

Cape Canaveral had been a United States missile-

testing site since 1950, and the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration (NASA) began opera-

tions at Cape Canaveral in 1958. As the space

programs expanded, the government acquired tens

of thousands of acres (see Chapter Six) around the

cape, and a portion of this acreage was set aside as a

national wildlife refuge in 1964. Following up on the

recommendations of the 1955 NPS study, Florida

1. National Park Service, A Report on a Seashore Recreation Survey of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts (Washington, D.C.:

Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1955), ii, 8-9, 171.

2 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

politicians pushed for the creation of a national sea-

shore. Discussion among the NPS, the Fish and

Wildlife Service, and NASA ensued, and Congress

ultimately established Canaveral National Seashore

in 1975.

Physical Environment of

the Seashore

Unlike many barrier islands, the barrier island

dividing Mosquito Lagoon from the waters of the

Atlantic Ocean has only a single dune ridge, aver-

aging 12 feet in height. For the vast majority of its

length, the dune is quite stable, backed by a dense

growth of saw palmetto and several other species of

hardy shrubs and grasses. Mosquito Lagoon,

extending along the backside of the Seashore’s

barrier island, is separated from the northern

reaches of the Indian River by an isthmus; the Haul-

over Canal allows boat traffic between the two

bodies of water. Mosquito Lagoon and its many

small islands account for two-thirds of the Sea-

shore’s acreage. The lagoon is one of the most

diverse estuaries on the entire eastern seaboard and

has been designated by the Environmental Pro-

tection Agency as an Estuary of National

Significance. Mosquito Lagoon has also been

declared an Outstanding Florida Water by the State

of Florida. In the realm of superlatives, Canaveral

National Seashore is home to more Federally pro-

tected species of plants and animals than any

national park except Everglades, and it has the

longest undeveloped stretch of oceanfront left along

the east coast of Florida.

The barrier island system in the vicinity of Mosquito

Lagoon is of relatively recent origin, having formed

six to eight thousand years ago. Elevation of Merritt

Island between the lagoon and Indian River ranges

from 2 to 15 feet above sea level. Soils are sandy in

composition. The major vegetation regimes within

the Seashore are hammock,

pine flatwoods (west

of the lagoon), scrub, palmetto prairie, and marsh.

Many areas of swamp and marshland have been

drained since 1900. Annual precipitation in the area

averages 54 inches, and although the climate is sub-

tropical, the area is subject to periodic droughts and

occasional winter freezes.

Background History of the

Area

Cape Canaveral and the central Florida coast were

some of the first North American lands encountered

by European explorers and invaders at the

beginning of the sixteenth century. Spanish adven-

turers named the cape area Cañaveral, meaning

canebrake. The area north of Cape Canaveral the

Spanish called Los Mosquitos for the pesky, biting

insect that still thrives in the area. For at least three-

and-a-half centuries the area was known as Mos-

2. National Park Service, “A Study of Alternatives for Canaveral National Seashore,” (n.d., unpublished mss), 1-5; Charlton

W. Tebeau, A History of Florida (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971), 462.

FIGURE 1. Map of Florida in vicinity of Canaveral

National Seashore. (Courtesy of NASA, 1980, Photo No.

116-KSC-080PC-144)

3. Hammocks are areas of slightly higher elevation where trees can establish themselves in otherwise marshy areas.

4. Kathryn L. Davison and Susan P. Bratton, “The Vegetation History of Canaveral National Seashore, Florida” (Athens, Ga.:

National Park Service Cooperative Unit, Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia, 1986), 7, 10-11.

National Park Service 3

quitos, referring to lands and waterways north of

the Seashore around Daytona Beach and the Halifax

River as well as those within the Seashore. The

northern portions and sometimes more of what is

now known as Mosquito Lagoon was for many

years called the Hillsborough or Hillsboro River.

Historically, the ocean inlet north of the Park was

called Mosquito Inlet, but it is now known as Ponce

de Leon Inlet.

Over 120 archeological sites have been recorded in

the park, some dating as early as 2000-500 BCE

(known in archeology as the Orange or Transitional

period). Taking advantage of the Gulf Stream, dis-

covered by Ponce de Leon in 1513, Spanish and

other colonial powers sailed past the area on their

return to Europe from the Americas between the

sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. A pivotal

encounter between the French and Spanish for

control of Florida occurred in the vicinity of today’s

national seashore, and Spain and Britain were often

at odds over Florida.

During the British period of control in Florida

(1763-1783), English plantations were carved from

the wilderness along the northern fringes of Mos-

quito Lagoon. Spanish land grants were awarded

when the land reverted to Spanish control after

1783, but due to the remoteness of the area and, in

the nineteenth century, conflict with the Seminole

Indians, any development was temporary. It was not

until after the Civil War that significant growth

occurred in Florida, when the appropriate soil and

good climate attracted citrus farmers and others,

spawning communities such as Eldora, which lies

within the park along the eastern shore of Mosquito

Lagoon.

In the mid-twentieth century, the prominence of the

U.S. aerospace program at Canaveral and the popu-

larity of the program nationally led to the creation of

many space-program related names in the region.

The central Florida coast around Canaveral, for

instance, became known as the Space Coast, and

parts of U. S. Highway 1 were dubbed the Astronaut

Tr a i l .

Scope and Purpose of the

Historic Resource Study

This Historic Resource Study (HRS) is designed to

provide a historic overview of the area encompassed

by Canaveral National Seashore and to evaluate the

Seashore’s extant historic structures within several

historic contexts. It synthesizes a variety of his-

torical and archeological information and will assist

Seashore personnel in site planning, resource man-

agement, and interpretation. As defined by NPS

policy, the HRS is “the primary document used to

identify and manage the historic resources in a park.

It is the basis for understanding their significance

and interrelationships, a point of departure for

development of interpretive plans, and the

framework within which additional research should

be initiated.”

This study brings together information about events

and persons that influenced the history of the Sea-

shore area. Relying heavily on written resources, it

does not overlook traditional oral information and

lore, but seeks to verify or corroborate those

sources where lore conflicts with general historic

trends or with itself.

The HRS also evaluates the integrity, authenticity,

associative values, and significance of individual his-

toric structures.

One goal of this documentation

and assessment is the preparation or updating of

National Register of Historic Places nominations for

all qualifying historic structures. To be listed in the

National Register, a resource must possess signifi-

cance and integrity that meet specified criteria, but

historic resources may be significant at the local,

state, or national levels. Each resource must also be

clearly associated with and illustrative of a specific

historical context, appropriate to this location. This

study will identify and discuss the significance of

resources owned by the National Park Service that

are illustrative of the historic contexts articulated

herein. The following historic resources are already

listed in the National Register of Historic Places

(NR):

■ Old Haulover Canal (CANA 046, 8Br188), 1843,

listed in 1978 (NR# 78000262)

5. National Register Bulletin 28, Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic

Preservation, Director’s Order No. 5 (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1997).

6. The evaluation of prehistoric structures is beyond the scope of this study.

4 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

■ Ross Hammock Site (CANA 035/Vo130, an

extensive midden; CANA 039/8Vo131, two

burial mounds; CANA 034/8Vo213, saltworks,

c. 1860), listed in 1981 (NR# 81000083).

■ Turtle Mound (CANA 006/ 8Vo109, shell

mound, and CANA007/8Vo111, sand burial

mound) 800-1400 CE, listed in 1978 (NR#

70000193).

■

Seminole Rest (CANA063/8Vo124, shell mound

and two historic houses), listed in 1997 (NR#

97000231).

■ Moulton-Wells House (Eldora State House),

1913, listed in 2001 (NR#01001247).

In addition, the Schultz House was nominated in

2002 under Criteria A (notable event) and C (archi-

tecture), but after several reviews, the SHPO

recommended in 2006 that the Seashore resubmit

the nomination under Criteria C only. The Seashore

intends to do this in 2008.

Historical Contexts and

Themes

To make the evaluation and interpretation of his-

toric resources more effective, the information

about related historic properties is grouped into his-

toric contexts. These contexts establish thematic,

geographical, and chronological boundaries for spe-

cific aspects of the historical development of the

area. Together, the historic contexts represent “a

comprehensive summary of all aspects of the history

of the area.”

The area encompassed by Canaveral National Sea-

shore has had a long and varied past. Cultural,

economic, technological, and social developments

as well as environmental changes have often over-

lapped the limits of the political and national eras.

This study recognizes the broader patterns of devel-

opment within the region by establishing five

historic contexts that transcend traditional political

periods, as follows:

■ Chapter Two: Climatic Change, Rising Water

Levels, and Prehistoric Human Occupation,

10,000 BCE to 1500 CE.

■ Chapter Three: European Incursions and Euro-

American Expansion, 1500 to1820

■ Chapter Four: Effects of Transportation

Networks, 1820 to1950

■ Chapter Five: Population Influx After Wars,

1845 to1950

■ Chapter Six: The Aerospace Program, 1950

to1975

These contexts link the history and extant historic

structures of the Seashore. They also associate the

Seashore’s resources with the broader interpretive

themes recently established by the National Park

Service.

Chapter Two, “Climatic Change, Rising Water

Levels, and Prehistoric Human Occupation, 10,000

BCE to 1500 CE,” traces the environmental changes

that facilitated or hampered human occupation of

the area that became the Seashore and the human

adaptation to continuing change. Water and water

levels have so much shaped the activities in the Sea-

shore that this chapter on the prehistoric period is

included in order to set forth the long-term role of

water resources. This chapter sets the stage for the

inception of the historic period, which begins with

the written documentation related to European

exploration of the Americas. In the National Park

Service’s thematic framework, this context is related

to the themes “Peopling Places” and “Creating

Social Institutions and Movements.”

Chapter Three, “European Incursions and Euro-

American Expansion, 1500 to1820,” traces the three

centuries of the area’s status as a colony of

European nations and its role within the imperial

systems of Spain and Great Britain. Although on the

periphery of their empires, the Seashore area was

strategically located on the sailing route for trans-

porting precious metals from the Americas to

Europe—metals that undergirded European econ-

omies. Native Americans in the area of the Seashore

quickly showed their shrewdness in adapting and

capitalizing on European enmities and incorpo-

rating European-style manufactured goods in their

daily activities. However, the overall effects of the

7. The listing is for the prehistoric features and does not include historical significance and activities.

8. National Register Bulletin 28, 209-10.

National Park Service 5

European influence were devastating. Exposure to

new diseases, cultural upheaval, sporadic fighting

and slave raiding eventually resulted in near-total

elimination of the original native populations, here

as elsewhere, in Florida.

European attempts to

settle and develop the area were often frustrated by

the destruction or checks brought about by interna-

tional rivalries. In the National Park Service’s

thematic framework, this context is related to the

themes “Peopling Places,” “Creating Social Institu-

tions and Movements,” “Expressing Cultural

Values,” “Shaping the Political Landscape,” and

“The Changing Role of the United States in the

World Community.”

Chapter Four, “Effects of Transportation Networks,

1820 to1950,” examines the role of the Seashore’s

natural setting of shallow estuaries in changing

modes of transportation. Sailboats and later small

steamboats could use the waterways, but the intro-

duction of and national dominance by rail and, later,

motor vehicle travel did not mesh well with an area

so dominated by waterways. Much of the Seashore

area remained on the periphery of the transpor-

tation networks and thus on the periphery of

economic development. However, the parts of the

Seashore on the west side of Mosquito Lagoon,

which lie adjacent or near to U. S. 1 and the Florida

East Coast Railway, could readily take advantage of

the newer rail and automobile networks. In the

National Park Service’s thematic framework, this

context is related to the themes “Peopling Places,”

“Creating Social Institutions and Movements,”

“Developing the American Economy,” and

“Expressing Cultural Values.”

Chapter Five, “Population Influx After Wars, 1845

to1950,” chronicles the population surges that fol-

lowed several wars fought by the U.S. Government.

These wars introduced soldiers from other regions

to Florida, and with peace the former fighting men

often returned to become Florida residents. In the

National Park Service’s thematic framework, this

context is related to the themes “Peopling Places,”

“Creating Social Institutions and Movements, and

Expressing Cultural Values,” “Developing the

American Economy,” and “The Changing Role of

the United States in the World Community.”

Chapter Six, “The Aerospace Program, 1950

to1975,” chronicles the depopulation of the

southern portion of the Seashore area to make way

for the U.S. aerospace program and the subsequent

development of the lands as recreational and envi-

ronmental preserves. In the National Park Service’s

thematic framework, this context is related to the

themes “Peopling Places,” “Creating Social Institu-

tions and Movements,” “Expressing Cultural

Values,” “Developing the American Economy,”

“The Changing Role of the United States in the

World Community,” and “Transforming the

Environment.”

Chapter Seven of the HRS presents recommenda-

tions concerning historic resource preservation and

interpretation for the consideration of Seashore

managers.

9. Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), xv.

6 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

National Park Service 7

Chapter Two: Climatic Change:

Rising Water Levels and

Prehistoric Human Occupation,

ca. 12,000 BCE - ca. 1500 CE

During the 12,000 or more years of human occu-

pation of Florida, humans, animals, and plants have

adjusted to changing environmental conditions

resulting from climatic fluctuations. As the envi-

ronment changed, many areas experienced larger

population levels. These people developed new sur-

vival and economic pursuits in response to their

environment. The Seashore is located where even

minimal change in the level of the sea drastically

affects the corresponding character of the land, with

variations in sea level producing changes in the mix

of dry land, seashore, and tidal marsh. Human habi-

tation and activities in and around the Seashore

were and remain quite sensitive to any variations in

water levels.

This brief treatment of the prehistory

of the Seashore illustrates the important role of

water and waterways in the Seashore and the close

relationships of humans to the water resources—a

relationship that continued in the historic period

and to the present.

When humans first arrived in Florida about 12,000

years ago, the climate was drier and cooler than

today. Vegetation reflected that climate and large

herd animals inhabited the land. Because huge

amounts of water were tied up in Ice Age glaciers,

sea levels were 160 feet lower than today, and

Florida’s land mass was about twice its present size.

The site of today’s beaches at Canaveral National

Seashore may have been located on sites 40 to 50

miles inland during periods of lowest sea level. With

water tables much lower, freshwater lay much

farther below the surface than today and water was

more scarce. Probably many of the sites occupied by

humans during this Paleoindian Period (ca. 12,000

BCE to 7500 BCE) are today inundated because of

the higher levels of the ocean, limiting our access to

evidence of their activities. Most Paleoindian sites in

Florida occur in regions of Tertiary limestone for-

mation, where water holes existed. Humans and

game animals were drawn to the same watering

holes, making them attractive for hunting by

humans as well. However, the Seashore does not lie

within the general area believed to have been

occupied by humans in the Paleoindian period, and

the earliest firmly established aboriginal sites in the

vicinity of Cape Canaveral are about 4,000 years

old.

Around 10,000 years ago, as the last Ice Age waned,

the climate slowly became less arid and sea levels

began to rise. Rising water levels diminished

Florida’s land mass, but also increased the surface

water supply so human populations could be sup-

ported in previously uninhabitable areas. In the

Archaic period, 7500 BCE – 500 BCE), humans

10. Most of this section is condensed from Jerald T. Milanich, Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida (Gainesville: University of

Florida Press, 1994) and James J. Miller, An Environmental History of Northeast Florida (Gainesville: University of Florida

Press, 1998), ch. 2, 3, 4. Miller’s multidisciplinary history for northeast Florida (just to the north of the Seashore) contains

analysis and insights that are applicable to the area covered by this study. Miller’s work does not yet have counterparts

for other regions of the state.

11. Davison and Bratton, “Vegetation History,” 14-15.

8 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

changed from nomadic subsistence patterns to more

settled coastal- and riverine-associated regimes. As

Miller notes, “It would be difficult to imagine a

better example of the close relationship among

environment, technology and social organization

than that offered by the comparison of Paleo Indian

to succeeding Archaic lifeways.”

Changes in the

environment rendered Paleoindian technology and

exploitative strategies obsolete as the large herd

animals of the earlier period died out with the

changes in the environment. Camps established

around water sources could now sustain larger pop-

ulations, and humans could occupy sites for longer

periods and perform activities that required longer

occupation at a single site. Tools became more

varied and plentiful as more sedentary ways allowed

for special-use tools and a larger collection of tools

than could be handled in the more nomadic ways of

the Paleoindian period. Around 7500 BCE, the tech-

nological adaptations to environmental change were

sufficiently evident for archeologists to delineate a

new culture, the early Archaic.

Windover Pond in

Brevard County, only 15 miles from the Seashore,

has yielded a treasure trove of information about

early Archaic peoples that has altered previous

interpretations of this period. Similar, as yet undis-

covered, sites may exist within the Seashore itself.

Evidence for coastal populations beginning about

5,000 years ago is much more definitive. During the

Late Archaic Period, beginning about 4,000 years

ago, dramatic changes in the ecology of the area set

the stage for significant technological, social, and

settlement changes. For the east-central Florida

coast, archeologists call the Late Archaic Period

Table 1: Archeological Periods

Cultural Period

Time Frame

Cultural Traits

PaleoIndian

12,000 - 7500 BCE

Migratory hunters and gatherers traveling between permanent and semi-permanent sources of

potable water; Suwanee and Simpson projectile points; unifacial scrapers.

Early Archaic

7500 - 5000 BCE

Hunters and gatherers; less nomadic; increased utilization of coastal resources; Arredondo, Hamilton,

and Kirk Serrated points; increase in population size and density; burials in wet environment

cemeteries; fabric and cordage available.

Mount Taylor

(Middle to Late

Archaic)

5000 - 2000 BCE

First occupation of the St. Johns River valley as evidence by large freshwater shell middens; more

evidence for coastal occupation; increased sedentism; shellfish becomes increasingly important in the

diet; burials also occur within midden deposits; stemmed, broad bladed projectile points; Newnan

point is most common.

Orange

(Late Archaic)

2000 - 500 BCE

Appearance of ceramics; Orange series is fiber tempered and molded; plain ceramics early on by 1650

BCE; geometric designs and punctations decorate the vessels; towards the end of the period, sand

becomes included as a ceramic tempering agent; increased occupation of the coastal lagoon; appears

to be an increase in socio-political complexity and territorial range.

St. Johns I

500 BCE - 100 CE

Plain and incised varieties of St. Johns ceramics; ceramics coiled, not molded; ceramic paste contains

sponge spicules; first use of burial mounds.

St. Johns Ia

100 - 500 CE

Village pottery was primarily plain; larger burial mounds, some containing log tombs; trade evidenced

by exotic materials within the mounds; appearance of Dunns Creek Red ceramics.

St. Johns Ib

500 - 750 CE

Village pottery is plain; increased influence of Weeden Island populations; central pit burials within the

mounds.

St. Johns IIa

750 - 1050 CE

St. Johns check stamped ceramics appear; increased use of burial mounds and burial patterns; mound

burial for higher status individuals; pottery caches found in mounds; increase in size and number of

villages.

St. Johns IIb

1050 - 1513 CE

Evidence of Mississippian influence; continued use of plain and check stamped ceramics; platform

mounds make their appearance at some of the ceremonial complexes.

St. Johns IIc

1513 - 1565 CE

European artifacts occasionally found in burial mounds; disease beginning to decimate the aboriginal

population; ceramic types still the same.

a. Table adapted from David M. Brewer and Elizabeth A. Horvath, In Search of Lost Frenchmen (Tallahassee: Southeast Archeological

Center, 2004).

12. Miller, Environmental History, 58.

13. Michael Gannon, ed., The New History of Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 3.

National Park Service 9

with its characteristic fiber-tempered pottery the

Orange Period, a period when the firing of clay

pottery was either invented in Florida or the tech-

nique was diffused there from coastal Georgia and

South Carolina. At one time, archeologists believed

that the earliest pottery manufacturing culture in

Florida was the Orange Culture of the St. Johns

region, but evidence from southwest Florida indi-

cates fired pottery developed just as early in that

region.

Some shell mounds and middens (refuse heaps) still

remain in locales along the Atlantic coast and the St.

Johns River; many more, however, were demolished

in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the

arrival of an environment essentially the same as

today, shellfish, fish, and other foods from bountiful

freshwater and coastal wetlands supported increas-

ingly larger human populations.

Wetland sites offered more easily acquired foods,

notably mollusks and fish, as well as the opportunity

for year-round habitation. By contrast, inland

hunting sites were seasonal. Archeological evidence

suggests that Late-Archaic residents established

central base camps and smaller “outlying shellfish-

and fish-processing sites near harvesting loca-

tions.”

Because sea levels are thought to be as

much as five feet higher today, the shell middens

available today for investigation probably were orig-

inally deposited on higher ground. Others are

probably buried under salt marshes, which were

formed as salt water encroached onto previously

dry land.

Researchers postulate that Archaic people remained

at a site until they overharvested the shellfish, which

were abundant in shallow water and tidal marsh

systems. When the immature shellfish remaining

were too small to be worth the harvesting effort, the

humans relocated. This interpretation calls into

question the notion that all early peoples consis-

tently maintained a disciplined and respectful

relationship with their environment.

Sedentation encouraged the development of dis-

tinct regional cultures. Archeologists generally

accept that regional cultures began to develop about

2,500 years ago. Canaveral National Seashore lies at

the fringe of the regions which have received the

most scrutiny from archeologists, and thus its pre-

historic past has been less fully elaborated than that

of other areas. Debate continues about whether

inhabitants moved between coastal and inland sites

or whether there were two distinct groups.

Some

archeologists suggest that the presence of larger sites

along the upper (southern) St. Johns River basin

suggests that these locations were central settle-

ments and that individuals traveled to other sites to

gather specific resources as needed.

Excavation of the Edgewater Landing sites, north of

Seminole Rest and outside of the Seashore, suggests

year-round coastal-zone occupation in conjunction

with special-use camps. Edgewater Landing appears

to have been a transitory site used for collecting

oysters and clams. Excavations at Seminole Rest

suggest that although its function was generally

similar to Edgewater Landing, the occupation

period was longer. The massive size of the mound

suggests that this was a processing station rather

than a temporarily occupied site focused on exploi-

tation. The Seminole Rest site may be more

representative of long-term generalized extractive

camps or possibly residential base camps.

The

Seminole Rest site is one of the few fairly intact St.

Johns I (a regional culture) sites.

Some archeolo-

gists suggest that rising sea levels and increased

14. Miller, Environmental History, 64. “The situation is muddled by the occasional use of the term “Transitional” to refer to

the period from 1200 or 1000 BCE, said to be a time characterized by the use of fiber-tempered pottery and pottery

tempered with a mixture of sand and fiber . . . . [Shannon, Russo, and Ruhl] have pointed out, however, semi-fiber-

tempered pottery may not be the chronological marker it was once thought to be.” Milanich, Archaeology of

Precolumbian Florida, 88.

15. Michael Russo cited in Milanich, Archaeology, 89 and 90.

16. Milanich, Archaeology, 254.

17. Elizabeth A. Horvath, ed., “Final Report of the Archeological Investigations at the Seminole Rest Site” (Cana063/8Vo124)

(Tallahassee: National Park Service, 1995), 140.

18. The St. Johns culture is one of a number of late-prehistoric cultures identified through the archeological record. Named

for the Florida river around which it flourished, the culture emerged about 500 BCE and lasted until around 800 BCE. The

St. Johns culture area saw the introduction of horticulture, but basic settlement and subsistence patterns continued to

revolve around seasonal hunting and gathering but with horticultural village life for most of the year. The culture’s shell

mounds were typically low or truncated cones around a meter high, and the culture produced the first burial mounds in

the region. See Elizabeth A. Horvath, Ashley A. Chapman, Duff B. Martin, and Robb McGowan, Preliminary Report on the

Archeological Investigations at the Seminole Rest Site (CANA-063/8Vo124) Canaveral National Seashore Volusia County,

Florida (Tallahassee: Southeast Archeological Center, 1994), 25.

10 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

salinity of the water produced larger oyster popula-

tions. This food source then drew inhabitants to the

general area of the Seashore. The period of most

extensive population began about 1,200 years ago.

These populations were possibly the ones that

encountered exploring Europeans in the sixteenth

century.

The coastal shell middens of Florida’s Atlantic coast

are among the largest shell middens in the United

States. Perhaps the most extensive is Turtle Mound.

The Ross Hammock Mounds site was occupied for

800 to 1,000 years, with occupation ending about

1,000 years ago. Analysis of the shell refuse at Ross

Hammock has indicated a shift from the dominance

of clams to oysters and back to clams, suggesting the

influence of environmental changes in Mosquito

Lagoon. Archeological investigations of the mounds

indicate that by far the most intensive prehistoric

human occupations occurred during the period

beginning about 1,200 years ago. This was the

period of the largest populations.

Evidence from human remains found at Ross

Hammock indicates that the people were hunter-

gatherers rather than agriculturalists since they

showed few signs of malnutrition, tooth decay, or

worn areas on the tibia that would indicate

extensive squatting or heavy labor. There were also

no signs of war or special burials to indicate differ-

entiation of rank or a caste system. Arthritis of the

elbow was common and may have been caused by

frequent net casting.

The Castle Windy site was occupied during this

latter period, with evidence indicating a 350-year

occupation beginning about 1,000 years ago. Inves-

tigators concluded that this site was occupied on a

limited seasonal basis during the winter months.

Excavations at Castle Windy and at Green Mound,

north of the Seashore on the Halifax River estuary,

revealed a wide variety of fish, shore bird, and small

animal remains, indicating the range of animals con-

sumed by these native populations.

The regional cultures that sedentation produced are

distinguished from one another primarily through

analysis of pottery styles and decorative motifs. The

differences appear in ceramic designs and style, but

according to James Miller “the degree to which they

reflect more fundamental differences is not clear.”

During the regional culture period, ceremonial

activities incorporated materials and practices

found both locally and imported from afar. For

example, burial mounds excavated at Ross

Hammock revealed that the mounds were con-

structed of earth borrowed from pits beside the

mounds. These burials contained pottery of a type

found in north-central and peninsular Gulf Coast

mounds of the same period. Archaeologists also

found a small log tomb of a type found in

Hopewellian tombs elsewhere in the Southeast.

There were both single and multiple interments, all

in flexed position.

Regional cultures continued to specialize and

become more distinct. Archeologists generally ter-

minate the “regional cultures” period with the

arrival of Europeans and the changes brought about

by their incursions.

Associated Properties

Properties associated with this context are shell

mounds and earthen burial mounds, all of which are

of prehistoric origin. Old Haulover Canal approxi-

mates the route of an ancient portage between

Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River, but prehistoric

features there can no longer be identified.

Seminole Rest

Seminole Rest consists of several prehistoric shell

mounds dating from 2000 BCE to 1565 CE. Snyder's

Mound, the largest mound at this site, is unique

because few structures this large remain intact

today. They are especially significant because 70%

of the mounds in Volusia County have been

destroyed, most to provide materials for road con-

struction in the early twentieth century.

Snyder's Mound, which lies on the shore of Mos-

quito Lagoon, was a large quahog-clam processing

center dating from about 600-1420 CE. It was used

primarily between 700-1100 CE. It measures

19. Deborah Pober “Demographics, Health and Sociopolitical Organization of Ross Hammock, Florida (8Vo131a)” (M.S.

Thesis, University of Florida, 1996), 96-97, 82.

20. David M. Brewer, “An Archeological and Ethnohistorical Overview and Assessment of Mosquito Lagoon at Canaveral

National Seashore, Florida” (M.S. Thesis, Florida State University, 1991), 48-51.

21. Miller, Environmental History, 72.

National Park Service 11

approximately 740 feet from north to south and

about 340 feet east to west and is approximately 13

feet high. Archeological testing recovered very few

artifacts, which suggests that the mound was used

seasonally for the gathering and processing of clams

that were consumed elsewhere. Processing would

have consisted of removing the shell and drying or

smoking the clams. Over many seasons, the clam-

shells accumulated and resulted in the large mound.

No evidence of burials in the mound has been

found and none is expected, given the difficulty of

excavation and the burial practices of the time.

Fiddle Crab Mound is a much smaller shell-capped

sand mound, purposefully constructed, approxi-

mately 15 feet in diameter, between River Road and

the canal. It was probably a platform for a structure,

although no archeological evidence of post molds

that would have signified a structure has been

found. A much larger range of artifacts was found

with this mound than with Snyder Mound, which

suggests that the site was occupied seasonally during

the late winter and spring and that it may have been

a seasonal base camp used by a family. A series of

four small middens or refuse sites are also asso-

ciated with Fiddle Crab Mound, which appears to

have been constructed on an earlier midden. Radio-

carbon dating indicates that Fiddle Crab Mound

and associated middens date between 120-1040 CE.

Occupation of the site began even earlier, as indi-

cated by the inclusion of a type of pottery known as

Orange series. This pottery dates as early as 2000

BCE or as late as 500 BCE. Further study is required

to learn more about the earliest period of site

occupation.

Turtle Mound

Turtle Mound was associated with the Surruque

during the historic period and bore the name of that

Native American group during the first Spanish era.

Alvaro Mexía’s 1605 description of the inland

waterway suggests that the main village of the Surru-

que might have been located at Ross Hammock.

Turtle Mound is located on the barrier island near

the north end of the Seashore. It is a conical mound

composed primarily of oyster shells deposited by

the indigenous inhabitants of Florida. The mound

almost straddles the narrow strip of land between

the Atlantic Ocean and Mosquito Lagoon. The

mound is approximately 30 feet high with 35-foot

summits at the ends of a North-Northwest by

South-Southeast axis. Today it is covered with veg-

etation, and a botanical survey of the mound by

Stetson University in 1975 noted eight species of

subtropical plants with Turtle Mound as their

northernmost known location.

Several distin-

guished botanists, including André Michaux in 1788

and John Small of the New York Botanical Gardens

in 1921, commented on the tropical nature of the

plants on Turtle Mound.

Small, unaware of

Michaux’s visit 133 years earlier, speculated that his

survey may have been “the first botanical

excursion” to Turtle Mound.

It is intriguing to

note that this unusual assemblage of plants is

growing naturally on a human-made structure.

Attempts to scale the mound in years past resulted

in damage and erosion of the mound, but today a

walkway permits access to the summit, which offers

a commanding view of the lagoon, barrier island,

and ocean.

Castle Windy

Located on the shore of Mosquito Lagoon, Castle

Windy is a roughly crescent-shaped shell midden or

mound approximately 295 feet long by 120 feet

wide, with a maximum height of 17 feet. Covered

with mature vegetation, including trees and shrubs,

the midden began to develop around 1200 CE and

continued for another 300 years.

Ross Hammock Burial Mound 1

This mound is approximately 20 feet high and 200

feet in diameter; it is an oval-shaped, earthen

mound covered with mature vegetation.

Ross Hammock Burial Mound 2

Located about 300 yards south of burial mound

number one, this mound is also earthen and oval-

shaped, with similar dimensions of 20 feet high and

200 feet in diameter at the base.

22. Text describing Seminole Rest mounds is taken from the park’s statement of the mound’s significance at <http://

www.nps.gov/cana/upload/seminole_rest_significance.pdf>

23. Eliane Norman, “An Analysis of the Vegetation at Turtle Mound,” Florida Scientist 39 (1) 1976, 23.

24. Taylor and Norman, André Michaux in Florida, 70; John K. Small “Green Deserts and Dead Gardens”, Journal of the New

York Botanical Gardens 24, no.1 (1923):203.

25. Small, “Green Deserts and Dead Gardens”, 202.

12 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Max Hoeck Burial Mound

The Max Hoeck Burial Mound is approximately 7

feet high and 45 feet in diameter at its base. It is

composed of earth and covered with mature vege-

tation. There is a 3-to 4-foot-deep trench near the

center of the mound, evidence of previous looting.

Bill’s Hill Burial Mound

This mound is oval shaped and approximately 75

feet in diameter at the base and 10 feet high. The

material is earth and shell, and the mound is covered

with mature vegetation.

National Register Eligibility

The mounds at Seminole Rest are considered

middens, not prehistoric structures, since there is

no evidence of burial in or of structures on the

mounds. They are, therefore, categorized as archeo-

logical sites.

Turtle Mound is already listed on the National Reg-

ister with a state-level of significance under

Criterion D. The information contained in this his-

toric context will serve as the basis for a review and,

if necessary, revisions of the National Register

listings. In addition, the Southeast Archeological

Center initiated fieldwork in April 2008 to nominate

the mound as a National Historic Landmark.

Robert Hellmann, of the Southeast Archeological

Center, resurveyed all listed sites in 2005 and 2006,

and found the Max Hoeck and the Bill's Hill burial

mounds to be at least locally significant and eligible

for the NR. Although they have been somewhat dis-

turbed in the past, they are mostly intact and

relatively rare.

26. E-mail communication, Robert Hellmann, SEAC archeologist to John Stiner 01/18/2008.

National Park Service 13

Chapter Three: European

Incursions and Euro-American

Expansion, 1500-1820

Cape Canaveral was one of the earliest sites on the

North American continent to be recognized and

depicted by exploring Europeans. Within ten years

of Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492,

a feature that might well be Cape Canaveral

appeared on maps. Cape Canaveral and Cabo Raso

on Newfoundland are the two earliest identifiable

place names on the Atlantic coast, their names

unchanged since the first quarter of the sixteenth

century, except for the brief period when Canaveral

was known as Cape Kennedy.

A nautical chart made by Alberto Cantino in 1502

for his Portuguese patron may be the earliest certain

portrayal of Cape Canaveral. Historical cartogra-

phers have assigned three possibilities to a large

unidentified land mass on the Cantino map. Some

continue to think that it is a depiction of the Yucatan

peninsula, others think it is the island of Cuba, but

the most widely supported idea today is that it

depicts Cape Canaveral with its now-familiar pro-

trusion from the Florida peninsula. Soon after

Christopher Columbus’s 1492 landing on behalf of

Spain on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean,

other European nations attempted to claim title to

lands in the “New World.” As was the custom at the

time, the Pope stepped into the fray and finally

affirmed a secular agreement, the Treaty of

Tordesillas, between Spain and Portugal in 1494,

which divided the new lands between the two

nations at a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde

Islands.

Spanish explorers and adventurers set out

to establish Spain’s claims throughout the Americas.

Debate continues as to whether it was Cape

Canaveral that Spain’s Juan Ponce de León named

“Cabo de los Corrientes”—Cape of Currents—

when he reconnoitered the Atlantic coast in 1513, as

claimed by Spain’s official historian, Antonio de

Herrera, in 1601. Any determination of the location

where Ponce first landed also affects the identifi-

cation of subsequently visited sites, for their

locations are contingent upon knowing the site of

the first landfall. Recent empirical investigations,

which combined sixteenth-century documents with

twentieth-century technology and an actual attempt

27. W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (New York: American Heritage Press,

1971), 53, 56.

28. J. Leitch Wright, Jr., Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971), 2-3.

FIGURE 2. The Portuguese Alberto Cantino’s map

of 1502, with what is probably the earliest

depiction of Florida at upper left. (Original at

Bibliotheca Estense in Modena, Italy)

14 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

to retrace the route under sail, place the site of

Ponce’s first landing just south of Cape Canaveral

near Melbourne Beach and consequently conclude

that the Cabo de Corrientes was at Lake Worth

Inlet, about 150 miles south of the Seashore. On the

other extreme, Jerald and Nara Milanich interpret

the Freducci map drawn in 1514-1515 as indicating

that Ponce initially landed north of the St. Johns

River on a barrier island on the Georgia coast or on

today’s northeast Florida coast and that Cabo de

Corrientes was at Lake Worth Inlet. Defending this

contention, the Milaniches assert that sea charts of

the time typically were “accurate for portrayals of

coastal configurations but notorious for inaccurate

latitudes.” The Milaniches also suggest that the

name Chantio that appears on the map “could be

the village at Turtle mound,” and that the mound’s

importance as a navigational marker could justify its

appearance on the map.

If this very speculative

interpretation is accurate, it probably marks the first

appearance of the mound on maps and gives promi-

nence to Turtle Mound as one of the earliest sites to

be identified in North America.

The Gulf Stream, the current often called the

Bahama Channel by colonial sailors, parallels the

east coast of Florida as it moves north from the

Florida Straits. Moving in a more easterly direction

as it passes Nova Scotia, the current becomes part of

the North Atlantic Drift which splits west of Ireland

into two branches, with one current flowing north

of the British Isles and another running to the south

along the west coast of continental Europe. The

strength and reliability of the Gulf Stream made the

Florida peninsula and especially its Atlantic coast a

territory that Spain could not afford to have fall into

the possession of another nation. Spain’s fleet

(carrera de Indias) carried the wealth of the

Americas to Spain, using the Gulf Stream as both its

path and its propulsion. In the early years of the

fleet, the main cargo was gold, a cargo that paid

handsomely for the space that it occupied aboard

ship. Gold was the chief stimulus for the creation of

the early fleet system even before the age of Spanish

silver mines in Mexico.

The great age of the Spanish fleets followed the con-

quest of two, densely populated, silver-rich

mainland areas, in Mexico and Peru, and the com-

mencement of large-scale silver mining. This sea

traffic reached its greatest volume in the 1550s and

1560s. “The Atlantic link between Spain and its

American colonies was at once a major result of the

expansion of Europe and a reinforcement of it. . . .

The capacity and dependability of the fleets also

stimulated new industries, trades and routes in

America itself.”

Europe-bound ships that had

departed Panama, laden with products of South

America and those ships leaving Vera Cruz with

Mexican products, joined at Havana, Cuba, to form

a single convoy sailing to Spain.

The discovery and development by the Spanish of

silver lodes in Mexico was probably a factor in

shifting the focus of exploration and settlement

from Florida’s east coast to its west coast, because of

the latter’s proximity to the silver lands. Beginning

with Ponce de León’s ill-fated attempt to settle in

southwest Florida in 1521, expeditions targeted the

west coast of the Florida peninsula, with the

exception of Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón’s unsuc-

cessful venture on the Georgia coast in 1526.

The Florida peninsula offered the last land-based

assistance and protection before the fleets turned

sharply eastward to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Evi-

dencing Florida’s strategic importance, Spain’s King

Philip II spent more on the defense of Florida

between 1565 and 1575 than upon any other areas

of the Spanish Indies.

Florida’s role and impor-

tance in guarding the Gulf Stream persisted, and

other nations, especially Great Britain, made many

attempts to wrest control of the Bahama Channel

from Spain and thus gain control of shipping and

trade from the Caribbean. The “Mosquitos” inlet

(today’s Ponce de Leon Inlet) helped Spain protect

29. Ibid.; Douglas T. Peck, “Reconstruction and Analysis of the 1513 Discovery voyage of Juan Ponce de Leon,” Florida

Historical Quarterly, 71 (1992): 146-47. Peck himself retraced Ponce’s voyage using exploration-age documents and sailing

technology as well as modern Loran C and related technology and maps. Peck asserts that the conditions described in

Ponce’s log and by his pilot “cannot be repeated [at] Cape Canaveral.” Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 18-19. Jerald

T. Milanich and Nara B. Milanich, “Revisiting the Freducci Map: A Description of Juan Ponce de Leon’s 1513 Florida

Voyage,” Florida Historical Quarterly 74 (1996): 319-25, quotes on 324 and 325.

30. Murdo MacLeod, “Spain’s Atlantic Trade, 1492-1720,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., Cambridge History of Latin America, Vol. 1

(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 358-61, quotes at 386 and 367, respectively.

31. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 20-22.

32. Eugene Lyon, “The Visita of 1576 and the Change of Government in Spanish Florida,” in Lyon, ed., Pedro Menéndez de

Avilés (New York: Garland Press, Inc., l995), 565.

National Park Service 15

Florida, because it served as a “back door” means of

communication for the capital at St. Augustine.

When direct communication with the sea was

unavailable, the inner waterways and various outlets

south of St. Augustine (many running through the

Seashore) were available to Spanish authorities.

Contact-Period Native

American Groups in the

Seashore Area

The Spanish referred to the residents of the area on

the south side of Ponce de Leon Inlet or near Turtle

Mound as Surruque. At this time the chief, his

village and villagers, and the location of the village

often went by the same name. The Surruque Indians

launched their canoes eastward from the foot of the

mound. The Spanish referred to the shell mound as

a buhío, the term for the natives’ circular buildings

topped with rounded roofs, because the mound

resembled a council house when viewed from the

sea.

Ross Hammock (CANA039/ 8Vo131) may be

the site of the proto-historic village of the Surruque

and residence of the chief (cacique), as described by

Alvaro Mexía in 1605 and then by Jonathan Dick-

inson almost a century later in 1696.

The northern part of the Seashore seems to have

been a transitional zone or boundary area for Native

American polities and languages at the inception of

permanent European settlement in Florida. Surely

the fact that many Florida tropical plants reach their

northern limits at or near Turtle Mound influenced

a division among cultures.

Contemporary corre-

spondence is unclear and sometimes conflicting as

to whether the Seashore land was under the control

of the Timucua or the Ais and thus whether the Sur-

ruque were Timucua or Ais. Archeological evidence

supports more strongly the Surruques’ affiliation

with the Timucua, but linguistic evidence supports

the Surruques’ affiliation with the Ais.

Addi-

tionally, the appearance of Europeans in the area

destabilized the pre-Contact political situation

among the Native American groups. European set-

tlers attempted to establish alliances with native

groups for protection against other Europeans and

against other Native American groups who might be

actively hostile to the Europeans’ presence. Thus, at

the very moment when Europeans were producing

documents with information on the natives’ cultural

affiliations, the very presence of the Europeans was

changing those affiliations.

Disagreement and confusion over the affiliation of

the Surruque may rest in part on later writers’ and

researchers’ failure to grasp that the term Timucua

indicated language, not political or cultural affili-

ation. Historian John Hann states that the Spanish

made little use of the name Timucua before the

1590s. He asserts that the Spanish referred to the

native peoples with more distinct tribal names

rather than generically as Timucua.

Timucua

33. For example, years later, in 1740, Florida’s Governor Manuel Montiano asserted that controlling the Stream was the aim

of Georgia’s founder James Oglethorpe. Letter Book of Governor Manuel de Montiano, November 11, 1737, Bundle 37,

letter no. 2, East Florida Papers Manuscript Collection, Library of Congress (microfilm copies).

34. John H. Hann, A History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 3, 171.

According to Mexía this was the residence of the cacique (chief). Irving A. Rouse, Survey of Indian River Archeology, Yale

University Publications in Anthropology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), 55.

35. Walter Kingsley Taylor and Eliane M. Norman, André Michaux in Florida: An Eighteenth-Century Botanical Journey

(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 103.

36. Hann, Timucua Indians, 3.

37. Ibid., 16-17. There are several spellings of this group, among them: Timucuan, Timuquan, Tomoka.

FIGURE 3. Detail from “Location of Indian tribes in

the Southeast about the year 1650.” (From

Swanton, The Indians of the Southeastern United

States.)

16 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

speakers received the most attention and analysis by

the colonizing Spanish, for it was the Timucua who

resided near the first Spanish settlements in

northeast Florida. Thus, the Timucua speakers were

the native groups whom the Spanish most fre-

quently encountered and had to deal with in order

to survive and succeed. In that context, Spanish

informants were concerned with communicating

with the residents of the settlement area and con-

cerned with the political relationships between the

natives themselves and between the natives and the

Spanish. Hann asserts that the boundary between

the chiefdom of the Surruque and Ais chiefdoms

probably lay somewhere between Turtle Mound

and the Haulover. Some authority and influence of

the powerful chief of the Calusa, who were centered

in southwest Florida, apparently extended to the Ais

and to today’s Space Coast.

The hegemony of the Calusa might have brought

about the removal of the more valued items and of

the people who washed ashore along Canaveral’s

coast or to the south. “Exotic” goods and humans,

the best plunder, were re-located to the Calusa’s

seat of power on the southwest coast of Florida,

thus leaving little evidence of the fate of the ship-

wrecked on the Atlantic side of the peninsula.

According to the shipwrecked Hernando de

Escalanate Fontaneda, who lived among the Calusa

for 21 years, Mexican-made items were salvaged

near Cape Canaveral by the Ais and then transferred

to southwest Florida as tribute to the chief of the

Calusa. Shipwreck victims might have been

delivered to the chief as well, for it was reported that

over 200 shipwrecked Spaniards had been brought

to the Calusa by their subjects. Escalante Fontaneda

stated that most were sacrificed at feasts and

dances.

After the establishment of a lasting Spanish set-

tlement on the Atlantic coast at St. Augustine in

1565, Native Americans in the Cape area sometimes

returned captured or shipwrecked persons to the

Spanish in exchange for manufactured goods

offered by the Spanish, most notably beads, colorful

cloth, and sharp metal tools.

Iron tools and glass

beads of European manufacture as well as native-

made articles fashioned of European-transported

metal were found at Fuller Mound A (8Br90) on the

east shore of the Banana River (south of the Sea-

shore). A copper pendant of rattlesnake design from

Mound A indicated the retention of Southern

Culture motifs. Likewise the Burns Mound sites

(8Br85) at Kennedy Space Center yielded a pendant

made from European silver, but of Indian manu-

facture. European-derived beads were also

unearthed. Although beyond the boundary of

Canaveral National Seashore, the sites are close

enough to suggest that Native Americans within the

Seashore might also have made their own decorative

items from salvage and adorned themselves with

European-made beads.

The possession by the

Timucua of gold and silver items that they had

acquired through trade with the Mayaca (a Native

American group allied with the Ais) is an example of

the value placed on and the role of salvaged goods in

the relations among native groups. The Ais had

probably acquired the metal items from shipwrecks

along the coast. Thus shiny items fashioned by and

for the Spanish in Peru and Mexico served as items

38. Ibid., 3, 171.

FIGURE 4. “Athore shows Laudonnière the Marker

Column Set up by Ribault,” no. P106. (Paul Hulton, The

Work of Jacques Le Moyne De Morgues, A Huguenot

Artist in France, Florida and England. Vol. II (British

Museum Publications Ltd. London: 1977) Plate 100)

39. Hernando d’Escalante Fontaneda, Memoir of Hernando d’Escalante Fontaneda Respecting Florida, Buckingham Smith,

trans. (Miami, 1944, reprint), 18-21; Stephen Edward Reilly, “A Marriage of Expedience: The Calusa Indians and Their

Relations with Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in Southwest Florida, 1566-1569,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 59 (1981):399-

401.

40. Eugene Lyon, “Cultural Brokers in Sixteenth-Century Spanish Florida,” in Lyon, ed. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Vol. 24.

Spanish Borderlands Sourcebooks (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1995), 330.

41. Florida Master Site Files Br90 and Br85; Gordon K. Willey, “Burial Patterns in the Burns and Fuller Mounds, Cape

Canaveral Florida,” Florida Anthropologist 7 (1954): 80-86.

National Park Service 17

of exchange, status, and advancement among the

Florida natives even before the exchanging of

salvage for manufactures with the Europeans was a

factor.

Soon after its discovery by Europeans, the Cape

Canaveral area became infamous for shipwrecks.

Crews and cargoes of hides, indigo, cochineal, and

millions of Spanish coins and ingots sank near

shore; some of the crews and freight washed up on

the beach to be picked up by Native Americans. One

of the earliest reported survivors in the Cape area

was Pedro Bustinçuri, shipwrecked in 1546.

Con-

temporary documents frequently reported the

killing of beached crews. Bustinçuri’s young age

probably saved his life; the Ais killed or deported

some of his adult shipmates.

A page or cabin boy

aboard ship, Bustinçuri was probably about 12 years

old at the time of the disaster. His sojourn with the

natives gave him the opportunity to learn their lan-

guage. European landing parties—French and

Spanish—would encounter Bustinçuri in 1565.

Early European Settlement

In 1564, interaction between Natives Americans and

Europeans changed from intermittent landings by

the Europeans, whether intentional or accidental, to

what became a permanent presence on the Florida

peninsula. Already-existing international and reli-

gious collisions among Europeans played a critical

role in the beginning of European settlement in

Florida and the Southeast. Most of the early fighting

and bloodshed between Europeans took place close

to the French and Spanish settlements near the

mouth of the St. Johns River and at the inlets imme-

diately south of the St. Johns bar, but hostile

activities also extended to the area of Cape

Canaveral. In fact, hostile activities extended to

wherever Spanish soldier-settlers found their

French counterparts.

The French Attempt to Settle in

Florida

The treaty signed in 1559 at Cateau-Cambrésis

ended the 65-year struggle between France and

Spain for control of Italy, but the negotiations did

not resolve the vital issue of the rights of nations to

settle in the Americas.

Spain insisted that the papal

decisions gave her exclusive rights to North

America; France asserted that unsettled areas were

free for anyone to colonize.

Although Spain had

dispatched many expeditions to the Southeast, none

had resulted in a permanent presence. In fact, the

Spanish crown was at the point of abandoning the

idea of settling Florida (the geographical term that

Spain applied to all its North American claims north

of Mexico).

Meanwhile the presence of a weak

monarch on France’s throne encouraged dissension

among the French nobility. Localized warfare broke

out in France, often pitting the Catholic majority

and the Protestant or Huguenot minority against

each other. In February 1562 Protestant Admiral

Gaspard de Coligny dispatched a settlement expe-

dition into Spanish-claimed territory. The

expedition first made landfall at the St. Johns River,

but turned northward. By the end of April, the

French Huguenots, led by Jean Ribault and René de

Laudonnière, had planted their colony at Port Royal

on Parris Island, South Carolina.

These might

have been the first Europeans to arrive in today’s

United States seeking to escape religious perse-

cution, but the small group of settlers left at Port

Royal grew restless and abandoned the settlement in

1563. The next French settlement effort occurred

farther south.

In May 1564, French settlers built Fort Caroline

near the mouth of the St. Johns River. Several parties

42. Hann, Timucua Indians, 42.

43. Eugene Lyon, “The Captives of Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 50 (1971): 1-24. Documents in the Archives of the

Indies, Seville. Spain: Report of Andrés de Eguino, 1565, Contaduría (Accountancy) section, Bundle 941, No. 1; Juan

Gutiérrez Tello, 1566 March 24, Contaduría 249, nos. 123 and 124; Melchoir Sardo de Arana, 1581 October 30, Contaduría

941; Royal decree, 1568 March 11, Indiferente general 1967.

44. Juan Ortiz, left behind during Narvaez’s exploration of the west coast of Florida in 1528, also had been spared because of

his youth. Ortiz’s native captors did not think he should be held responsible for the action of the adults, that he was

“deserving of forgiveness because of his tender age. . . . he had committed no crime.”Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of

the Inca, John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), 63.

45. The peace settlement ended the intermittent state of war which had existed since 1522 between the Valois dynasty of

France and the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs.

46. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 40-41.

47. Ibid., chapter 2.

48. Ibid., 41; Lyon, Enterprise of Florida, 21-22.

18 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

of men who had set sail from Fort Caroline in

December 1564 became small-time pirates. They

raided the Cuban town of Baracoa for supplies and a

ship and then crossed to Hispaniola and assaulted a

Spanish ship at anchor. Another group from Fort

Caroline also seized supplies as well as taking a

prisoner.

Some of the French raiders were ultimately captured

by Spanish forces, and their interrogation by

Spanish captors revealed the existence of the French

colony to Spanish officials. At the end of March

1565, news of the French settlers (interlopers from

the Spanish perspective) finally reached the king of

Spain.

At the end of June 1565, Spaniard Pedro

Menéndez de Avilés set sail from Spain with ten

ships and a thousand men to counter the French

and establish a colony on the southeast mainland.

The Spanish considered the French to be intruders

and usurpers in Spanish-claimed territory. France

relied on its settlement activity and actual presence

to support its claims. On August 28, 1565, Jean

Ribault arrived at Fort Caroline to re-provision des-

perate French colonists. When Pedro Menéndez’s

convoy appeared offshore a week later, Ribault sus-

pended the off-loading of cargo and, against the

advice of his officers, headed his boats toward the

ocean to avoid being trapped in the river. After an

initial challenge between the opposing naval forces,

Ribault and his flagship, Tr i n i t é , stood out to sea.

Menendez headed south and on September 8 estab-

lished St. Augustine, 40 miles south of the mouth of

the St. Johns River.

Ribault, hoping to catch Menéndez off guard,

steered his ships towards the Spanish encampment.

Just as he arrived at the mouth of the harbor, a hur-

ricane-strength storm hit, sweeping his helpless fleet

to the south. Menéndez, realizing Ribault’s situ-

ation, marched northward to Fort Caroline. On

September 20, 1565, Spanish forces surprised and

overcame the depleted French garrison at Fort Car-

49. The National Park Service undertook the reconstruction of Fort Caroline as Fort Caroline National Memorial in 1964 at a

site thought to be near the French fort’s original location.

50. Lyon, Enterprise of Florida, 38-41.

FIGURE 5. The French aiding Chief Outina in battle against his arch-enemy

Potanou. (Photo reproduction from Theodor de Bry and Charles de la

Roncière, La Floride Française: Scènes de la vie Indiennes, peintes en 1564

[facsimile of the 1564 original (Paris, 1928)], Collection of Timucuan

National Park Service 19

oline. The Spanish renamed the captured fort San

Mateo, honoring the saint on whose day it had been

taken.

While Menéndez and his men were securing the

Fort Caroline site, Ribault’s fleet was caught up in

the hurricane, and one by one his four ships were

sunk or driven ashore. Although the ship masters

had attempted to make their way away from the

shore and out to sea, strong winds caused the ships

to lose sails, masts, and rudders. One by one the

ships broke up in the heavy surf. Three of the

heavier French ships were wrecked in the vicinity of

Mosquito (Ponce de Leon) Inlet. The flagship

Trinité grounded intact farther south not far from

Cape Canaveral and most of its crew came ashore

safely. One smaller craft outlasted the storm and

headed for the Caribbean. It is possible that these

wrecks lie within Seashore waters. The shipwrecked

men gathered into two large parties for mutual

defense against local Indian raiders. The north-

ernmost group contained over 600 men from several

ships, while the southernmost group held about 350

men, including Jean Ribault and other survivors of

the Tr i n i t é.

After some discussion each began a

long trek northward toward Fort Caroline.

Menéndez met the first group at Matanzas Inlet,

approximately 15 miles south of St. Augustine, and

killed most of them. The Spanish encountered the

second group on October 12 at the same site. Many

of the French surrendered, but refused to renounce

their religious beliefs and were killed, including Jean

Ribault. About 70 slipped away from the Spaniards.

They retreated back down the coast to the ship-

wreck, whose timbers they used to build a makeshift

fortification and begin construction of a boat. The

Frenchmen surmounted their rough earthworks

with cannon from the Tri n i t é.

Learning from native groups that there were yet

more Frenchmen farther south, Menéndez decided

to combine exploration with extermination. The

Spanish reconnoitered the Florida coast and its

estuaries, looking for a good harbor where they

could build a fort to protect the Bahama Channel.

With 150 men on foot, Menéndez marched south

along the beach, while three small craft, carrying

one hundred of his men, sailed south for a ren-

dezvous with the land forces.

Menéndez and his party arrived at the makeshift

French fort on November 1 (All Saints’ Day)

according to chronicler Gonzalo Solís de Merás.

The French refugees fled to the woods upon the

Spaniards’ approach, but Menendez offered to

spare the Frenchmen’s lives if they surrendered. The

majority accepted; some 20 refused, preferring to

take their chances among the natives, and slipped

away. Menéndez destroyed the fort, burned the ship

the French were building and buried the artillery,

because the Spanish boats were too small to carry

the cannon.

Menéndez estimated that he captured

70 to 80 French colonists; Solís de Merás (who was

present) reported 150. Menéndez marshaled his

men and the captives southward to the inlet at Ais

(Sebastian Inlet) and left them in the care of a pur-

portedly friendly cacique. Then Menéndez departed

for Cuba with 50 of his own men and 20 French cap-

tives to acquire supplies for this detachment at Ais as

well as for the main settlement at St. Augustine.

Following the failure of Fort Caroline, the French

would not attempt to settle the Atlantic coast again,

but contented themselves with trading with the

Native Americans in defiance of Spanish prohibi-

tions. Not only had Ribault’s sequence of

misjudgments ended in disaster, but events within

France itself were not favorable for attempting

another settlement.

It would be more than 100

years before France planted another settlement in

the Southeast when they founded Mobile, in

present-day Alabama, in 1702.

Thus lands within the Seashore saw activities and

struggles that comprised the earliest campaign

between European nations to decide claims to ter-

ritory and control of the North American mainland

51. David M. Brewer and Elizabeth A. Horvath, In Search of Lost Frenchmen, (Tallahassee: Southeast Archeological Center,

2004), 37, 112-114, 124.

52. Brewer and Horvath, In Search of Lost Frenchmen, 37.

53. Lyon, Enterprise of Florida, 126-30.

54. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 40-49; Lyon, “Captives of Florida,” 1-24.

55. Gonzalo Solís de Merás, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Jeannette Thurber Connor, trans. (Gainesville: University of Florida

Press, reprint 1964), 126.

56. Lyon, “Captives of Florida,” 175.

57. John T. McGrath, The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the Hurricane (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000),

138.

20 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

and adjacent water routes. That the ocean currents

off the coast of Florida could be protected by the

Spanish allowed the delivery of precious metals to

Spain. The effect of those ingots on the economy of

Europe was a major factor in the path of European

history and the development of the lands that would

become the United States. The Armstrong site

(CANA 72) may be the remains of a vessel from

Ribault’s fleet, salvaged to provide protection to the

French. Evidence from the Armstrong site indicates

that Europeans, who might have been survivors

from Ribault’s fleet, were living with natives and

using a forge to re-work ships’ spikes to make tools

and ornaments.

An earlier shipwreck victim, Pedro Bustinçuri,

found himself caught up in the Spanish-French con-

flict on the Florida coast. The French refugees from

Fort Caroline who landed in the vicinity of Cape

Canaveral in 1565 encountered Bustinçuri after his

20 years among the Ais and his marriage to the

daughter of a chief. The French had already sent

Bustinçuri to France before the arrival of Spanish

forces at the Cape, and once in France, Bustinçuri

subsequently escaped to Spain. Then the Spanish

king sent Bustinçuri back to Florida to serve as a

translator for Pedro Menéndez. The Spanish king

also sent along swords, daggers, axes, scissors, and

other gifts to offer to the Ais in hopes of maintaining

their friendship. Bustinçuri later returned to Spain,

where by 1571, he was rewarded with the post of

Keeper of the Swans at one of the king’s residences

in Madrid as well as “back pay” for his years of cap-

tivity in Florida.

In 1568, Dominique de Gourges arrived in Florida

to avenge the French settlers killed by the Spanish.

On Good Friday, de Gourges destroyed the small

Spanish blockhouses on either side of the entrance

to the St. Johns River, then moved against the

Spanish at Fort San Mateo. The Spanish grossly

overestimated the size of the French force and

slipped out of the fort, leaving usable artillery and

ammunition. The French took the fort without

opposition, hung the Spaniards that they found and

headed back to Europe with the fort’s artillery as a

bonus. A fire accidentally set by Indians celebrating

the departure of the Spanish from the fortified site

burned Fort San Mateo.

Spanish Missions and Native

Americans

The security of the new Spanish settlements in

Florida depended upon good relations with the

Native Americans. Although most Europeans

quickly learned that native groups were not alike,

Eugene Lyon wrote, “To Menéndez, Indian rela-

tions were all of a piece.” His plan for every group

was to establish a benevolent overlordship, bring

peace to warring groups, eradicate heresy and

unbelief, and spread the Christian Catholic gospel

among them.

Initially the Spanish had viewed

Native Americans as potential slaves and raided the

southeastern coast for laborers. The central Florida

coast was spared from early slave raids because of

the lack of suitable inlets for large ships. Indian

slavery in the Americas had been prohibited prior to

58. Douglas R. Armstrong, French Castaways at Old Cape Canaveral (Palm Bay, Fla.: private printing,1996), 59-62.

FIGURE 6. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519-1574),

founder of St. Augustine, who defeated the

French at Fort Caroline in 1565. (Florida Memory,

Florida Photographic Collection, State Archives of

Florida at <http://fpc.dos.state.fl.us/reference/

rc00947.jpg>)

59. Lyon, “Captives of Florida.”

60. Lyon, Enterprise of Florida, 199-200.

61. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 48.

National Park Service 21

permanent Spanish settlement in Florida by the

Laws of Burgos of 1512 and the New Laws of

1542.

Variations and subtleties by the Spanish in

demanding tribute labor from the Native Americans

continued, but Indians were not considered to be

personal property as were enslaved persons of

African descent. This would not hold true later for

the English and French colonies in North America.

Indian slaves were captured and transported both to

and from all of the English colonies from South

Carolina to New England.

French Louisiana, too,

counted Indian slaves among its residents.

The establishment of missions was a universal char-

acteristic of lands claimed and colonized by Spain,

beginning even before the New World ventures

when the Canary Islands came under Iberian

hegemony in 1341.

(In Asia as well, Spanish and

Portuguese friars established missions.) Missions

were set up in Florida, as in other areas of the

Americas. Pedro Menéndez transported members

of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to preach and prose-

lytize among Native Americans in the Southeast, but

the Jesuits’ presence was short lived. Martyrdom

and a lack of exploitable resources discouraged

Jesuit enthusiasm for the region. Members of a

young and dynamic order, the Jesuits took no vow

of poverty and were as concerned with the eco-

nomic as the religious aspect of missionary activity,

representative of Iberian society with its “interplay

of worldly enterprise and religious purpose.”

With their emphasis on humility and mission work,

it was the Franciscans, established in Italy in 1209,

62. Jerald T. Milanich, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 110-112.

63. An exception was Georgia, which prohibited slavery from its establishment as a British colony in 1733 until 1753, when

slavery became legal.

FIGURE 7. Plan of St. Augustine by Thomas Jeffreys, ca. 1762. (Library of Congress, G3934.S2

1762.J4 Vault)

64. At this time the nation of Spain had not been consolidated from the several kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula.

65. Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. I (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,

1984), Vol. 1, quote at 511.

22 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

who scored the converts in Florida after their arrival

there in 1573. Florida natives were spared some of

Spain’s most exploitative economic institutions

because of close supervision by the Crown of the

colony’s affairs. A formal tribute was not introduced

in Florida although informal tribute was established

to a profound degree. Natives were required to

provide food to soldiers passing through missions

and, because of the lack of pack animals, to

transport supplies for soldiers and friars, especially

around St. Augustine.

In Florida, the hierarchy of native officials remained

largely intact in contrast to the missionary regimes

established more than two centuries later in Cali-

fornia. In Florida the friars went to the natives,

setting up the missions in the existing Native

American towns and villages and worked through

the ruling families in those towns. In California in

the second half of the eighteenth century, friars

relocated Native Americans to the missions, which

served as economic enterprises as well as religious

centers. The California system was more disruptive

of residential patterns and tribal governments.

In 1595, Florida’s governor convinced the Ais and

the chief (cacique) of Surruque to accept mission-

aries, to send laborers to the capital at St. Augustine,

and to report the presence of any non-Spanish for-

eigners. The chief of Surruque accepted gifts to

cement the agreement. Part of the reason for the

determined pursuit by the Spanish of Native Amer-

icans’ allegiance was to counter the increased

presence after 1589 of French and English corsairs

in Gulf Stream waters. In addition to the generalized

threat to Spanish shipping, these privateers came

ashore in Florida to trade for salvage that natives

had retrieved from Spanish ships and to trade with

the Ais for ambergris that washed up on the beaches

near Cape Canaveral.

Franciscan friars charged that the governor kept the

cacique of the Surruque prisoner when the native

leader visited St. Augustine, and that other

important Indians, who had accompanied the chief,

were fettered together to hinder their movement.

The friars feared that these actions would dis-

courage other Surruques who might be considering

conversion because they feared that conversion

would mean leaving their natal towns. Governor

Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo visited among the

natives in the Cape region during his sea voyage

from Cuba to take office at St. Augustine. Visits had

been friendly and the governor had expected the

natives to welcome, rather than to kill, the Spaniard

and his two interpreters who carried gifts to the

coast Indians.

According to Father Baltasar López, writing in 1598,

the governor retaliated against the Surruque, killing

70. Additional Surruques were captured and taken

to St. Augustine and assigned as servants among the

townspeople. King Philip III of Spain ordered their

servitude terminated and forbade similar penalties

in the future. Another friar, however, set forth the

idea that the governor was justified in retaliating

against the Ais, but that the warfare should not have

extended to the Surruque. Such hostility by the

Spaniards would endanger the lives of all ship-

wrecked victims who might wash ashore in the cape

area and farther south, where most wrecks

occurred.

Spanish communiques make it clear that, at the

beginning of the seventeenth century, the Seashore-

area Indians had been exposed to Spanish life and

culture in St. Augustine and had access to goods

created in New Spain and Peru that they salvaged

from shipwrecks. They also had access to items

manufactured in Spain, especially cloth, acquired as

gifts or barter with the Spanish in exchange for ship-

wreck salvage. We can only speculate how this

contact with the Spaniards might have changed the

lives of the native people.

Relations did not remain hostile. In May 1605, a

high-ranking Surruque, referred to as Little Captain,

traveled to St. Augustine in hopes of strengthening

relations between his chief and the Spanish. He

offered to send his own son to serve the governor

and requested that the governor send a Spanish

youth to the native village, typical of native diplo-

matic reciprocity which at times used humans as

good-faith exchange. The Spanish boy could learn

66. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 78-82.

67. Amy Turner Bushnell, Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida (New

York: American Museum of Natural History, 1994), 64. Ambergris is a waxy substance that originates in the intestines of

sperm whales and was used as a fixative in perfumes.

68. Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., The Franciscan Conquest of Florida (1573-1618) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of

America, 1937), 129-39.

National Park Service 23

the native language there, which Little Captain said

was “very different from others.

Unofficial interaction also took place. In 1603, seven

or eight African slaves escaped from St. Augustine

and sought refuge among the Surruque. The

Spanish sufficiently pressured the Surruque to

return five of the runaways, but two or three of the

escapees had moved on further south to live among

the Ais and marry Ais women. The Spanish were

concerned that the refugees in Ais would provide

information to Spain’s European enemies whose

ships might land along that part of the coast or,

worse, might serve as guides for an enemy party

attacking St. Augustine. The governor considered

whether the Spanish should raid in Ais to retrieve

the potential “traitors.”

These runaway slaves

might have become acquainted with Surruque cap-

tives when the Surruque hostages were in St.

Augustine five years earlier and acquired infor-

mation from them about a potential destination or

route, and possibly could converse with some of the

natives of the Seashore area.

These early seventeenth-century flights of slaves

from St. Augustine to the Surruque and to sites

probably within the Seashore were among the ear-

liest slave escapes to take place in today’s United

States. The escape in 1603 took place eighty years

before the first slave escapes from English South

Carolina to Spanish Florida. The flights to Florida

from Carolina have been recognized at Fort Mose

National Historic Landmark at St. Augustine, the

site of a village (1738-1740) whose population

included African Americans who had escaped from

bondage in Carolina.

The flight of slaves from Carolina was encouraged

by Spain and Spain’s sanctuary policy for the run-

aways was very much a product of the international

rivalry among Europeans in the Southeast. The

slaves who ran from St. Augustine in 1603 no doubt

made their decision based on personal, not interna-

tional, concerns. Yet even in the early 1600s, the

Spanish viewed the flights in the context of interna-

tional rivalry.

Enslaved Africans had arrived from Spain as part of

Pedro Menéndez’s colonizing group in 1565. Addi-

tional slaves came to Florida over the years from the

Caribbean, South America, and Mexico as well as

Spain. In Florida’s early colonial years many of the

male slaves in the colony were crown-claimed slaves

rather than the servants of individuals. They did

heavy labor, worked as sailors, and performed other

tasks for the government, such as working in the

military hospital. The records of marriages and

births for the St. Augustine parish contain few

entries for Africans around the time of the 1603

escape. The few entries that endure deal with slaves,

not free blacks, and no place of birth was included

in the records.

Florida Governor Pedro de Ibarra wanted to assure

the allegiance of or at the least curb defections

among native groups along the coast south of St.

Augustine. He feared that the natives aided and

abetted the depredations of French and English

pirates, and he was also fearful that escaped slaves

from St. Augustine would encourage stronger

reprisals than the Indians might carry out on their

own against Spanish shipwreck victims.

To improve the colony’s security, Governor Ibarra

sought to improve his understanding of local geog-

raphy and in 1605 sent Alvaro Mexía to explore the

coast and natural inland waterway from St.

Augustine to St. Lucie Inlet. A Christianized native

interpreter accompanied Mexía, and his chart and

accompanying description pointed out the

impressive promontory of Turtle Mound.

referred to Mosquito Lagoon as the Lake of Sur-

ruque and claimed that “the lake” was navigable for

shallow-draught vessels. His report also is one of the

main sources on the Ais. Some researchers believe

that his map shows location of villages along the

69. Letter from Gov. Pedro de Ybarra to the Council of the Indies, St. Augustine, 1605 May 13, AGI 53-1-6/20, Susan R. Parker,

trans., copy in Canaveral National Seashore research files.

70. Hann, History of the Timucua, 171; Report by Gov. Pedro de Ybarra, 1605 December 26, AGI 54-5-9/64, Susan R. Parker,

trans., copy in Seashore research files.

71. Cathedral Parish Records, Diocese of St. Augustine, in diocesan offices at Jacksonville, Florida (microfilm copies). Historical

research and analysis to date focus on the late 1600s, the 1700s, and early 1800s, after the establishment of a sanctuary

policy to encourage runaways from British North American colonies to Spanish Florida. The first century of African slaves

in Florida remains to be studied.

72. Hann, History of the Timucua, 170-72.

73. Alvaro de Mexía, Rutter for the Coast South to Ais, AGI SD 224, annotated translation published in Irving Rouse, A Survey

of Indian River Archeology Yale University Publications in Anthropology. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), 265-74.

24 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

lagoon accurately enough to determine general

locations even today.

Despite intentions, agreements, and a desire to

convert and pacify all native groups, there is no clear

evidence of missions in the immediate Cape area.

There were missions to the Mayaca people, but evi-

dence about mission location is inconclusive and

conflicting. The peripheral and largely ill-defined

position of the Mayaca makes the information in the

Spanish records difficult to interpret. Sequential

relocations by the native groups referred to as

Mayaca might be a basis for the confusion. Loca-

tions for the Mayaca have been identified as Lake

George, approximately 50 miles northwest of the

Seashore’s north boundary, or perhaps even farther

south on the St. Johns River. However, a late-seven-

teenth-century source suggested that the Mayaca

were in the Cape Canaveral area.

Pedro Menéndez encountered a deserted Mayaca

village when he explored the St. Johns River in the

summer of 1566.

Historian John Hann asserts that

the Mayacas’ identification with the Freshwater

Timucua (based on testimony in 1602) might have

been a geographical classification, a continuation of

the riverine villages, assigned from the Spanish per-

spective rather than a reflection of native political

affiliations.

Hann points out that there is no docu-

mentary or physical evidence of missions in the

general area of Mosquito Lagoon. The presence of

Christianized natives there might have resulted from

visits by friars from the mission at Mayaca.

Throughout Florida, missionary friars traveled from

villages where there was a permanent mission (doc-

trina) to visit nearby towns on an itinerant basis.

Alternatively, some members of the Mosquito-area

groups of Native Americans might have received

religious information and learned Spanish in St.

Augustine.

At its height between 1630 and 1650, the mission

system in Spanish Florida stretched from the admin-

istrative center in St. Augustine northward almost to

the Savannah River, westward to the Apalachicola

River, perhaps to the southwest as far as the Cove of

the Withlacoochee River, southward to the Daytona

Beach area, and along the rivers of central Florida

for an undefined distance. By the mid-1650s, revolts

and disease seemed to have brought about a

downward turn in the success of the missions. A

1683 map by Alonso Solana shows a “village of

heathen Indians” (pueblo de infieles) located at

Turtle Mound. In 1696, Englishman Jonathan Dick-

inson heard about an uprising by the Jororos in the

vicinity of Cape Canaveral during which a Fran-

ciscan friar and two of his native assistants were

killed. John Hann states that Dickinson’s comment

on the killing of a friar at the Atoyquime mission

“suggests that the Jororo missions were near Cape

Canaveral.” Three friars had vowed to convert the

“Cape Indians” and were in the process of per-

suading the chief of a town to embrace Catholicism,

when the chief’s villagers rose up against the friar,

the chief, and another native convert.

Jonathan Dickinson’s introduction to the Florida

natives occurred when his party was shipwrecked

near Jupiter Inlet in 1969. With his wife, child, and

several shipmates, he trekked northward, passing

through today’s Canaveral National Seashore. After

a respite in St. Augustine, they continued their

journey, with a Spanish escort, to the English colony

of South Carolina. Dickinson’s subsequently pub-

lished journal provides invaluable information and

descriptions of the Native Americans of the Florida

and Georgia coasts. His account along with that of

Mexía is one of two main sources on the Ais and

natives of the area.

The founding of an English colony in the Carolinas

in 1670 ultimately had a devastating effect on the

Spanish mission system in Florida. In 1702 and

1704, English invaders from the Carolina colony

and their Creek Indian allies raided and destroyed

missions on the sea islands north of St. Augustine

and then around the Tallahassee area. They also

captured many Spanish-allied mission Indians as

slaves. Thereafter, the remaining missionized native

population clustered around St. Augustine for pro-

74. Hann, Timucua Indians, 58.

75. Ibid., 163.

76. Hann, Timucua Indians, 171-72.

77. “Map of the Island of Florida submitted by Governor Marquez de la Cabrera, 1683" Cartografía de Ultramar, Carpeta II:

Estados Unidos y Canada (Madrid: Impr. De Servicio de Geográfico del Ejército, 1949), Map no. 48; Luis R. Arana, “The

Alonso Solana Map of Florida 1683,” Florida Historical Quarterly 42 (1964): 261; Gannon, ed., New History, 78-79; John H.

Hann, ed. and trans., Missions to the Calusa (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991), 30; Bushnell, Situado and

Sabana, 177; Evangeline Walker Andréws and Charles McLean Andréws, eds., Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal or, God’s

Protecting Providence. (1699; reprint, Stuart, Fla.: Valentine Books, 1975), 58-60.

National Park Service 25

tection. During the first half of the eighteenth

century, the extent of villages of missionized Indians

around St. Augustine expanded and contracted in

response to alternating periods of peace and hos-

tility. A Spanish map of the lower Atlantic coast

made about 1740 shows “Las Rosas de Ayamon,”

about 16 miles south of St. Augustine, as Florida’s

southernmost village. Its location was described as

four leagues (12 to 16 miles) beyond St. Augustine,

and thus well north of the Seashore.

The tiny

remnant Native American population that had allied

with the Spanish departed Florida for Cuba in 1763

and 1764 along with the Spanish citizenry when

Great Britain received Florida at part of the peace

treaty that ended the Seven Years War.

Defending Spanish Florida

The Spanish crown expended funds for almost two-

and-a-half centuries to retain Florida despite that

colony’s limited production and minimal economic

contributions to the Spanish empire. Although it

had little of value to export, Florida was vital to the

protection of the Gulf Stream and the shipping of

resources from the Americas to Spain. In 1672,

Spain began construction on its ninth and last fort at

the colonial capital of St. Augustine. The con-

struction of the Castillo de San Marcos in St.

Augustine was made as a response to threats in and

near Florida as well as being a part of a larger effort

throughout the Spanish West Indies to improving

defenses in response to threats to Spanish claims

from other colonizing nations, especially from

England. An English raid in 1668 on St. Augustine

hastened Spain’s commitment to improve Florida’s

defenses. The establishment of an English set-

tlement at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1670 made

it imperative to upgrade St. Augustine’s defenses. St.

Augustine’s new masonry fortification, today’s

Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, was

built of locally available shell stone known as

coquina. The initial phase of construction of the

“castle” was completed in 1695, 23 years after

ground breaking.

To guard the southern

approaches to the capital, Fort Matanzas National

Monument, about 12 miles south of St. Augustine at

Matanzas Inlet, was constructed of coquina

78. “Map of the Coast of Florida from Cape Canaveral . . . to Carolina . . .,” Cartografía de Ultramar, Carpeta II: Estados

Unidos y Canada, c. 1742 (Madrid: Impr. De Servicio de Geográfico del Ejército, 1949), Map no. 50; Susan R. Parker, “The

Second Century of Settlement in the Southeast” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Florida, 1999), chapter 2.

79. Luis Rafael Arana and Albert Manucy, The Building of Castillo de San Marcos (N.p.: Eastern National Park & Monument

Association, 1977).

FIGURE 8. View from northwest of Castillo de San Marcos (begun 1672), St. Augustine, Florida, in 1965.

(Library of Congress, HABS, FLA,55-SAUG,1-13)

26 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

between 1740 and 1752 to replace an earlier

wooden watchtower.

Coquina is composed of broken seashells cemented

together by their own lime. Variations in geological

pressure on the shells produce a range of hardness

and usefulness for building material. Coquina

appears intermittently along the Atlantic coast of

Florida from St. Augustine southward and extends

as far as Cuba. Coquina shell stone was quarried in

the Seashore in the vicinity of the “Haulover,” where

Native Americans and later travelers transferred

their boats from Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River

and where the stone is found quite close to the

surface.

This provided a stable substrate for later

creation of the Haulover canals discussed below.

Within the Seashore, there are examples of the use

of coquina for practical use, such as the coquina

blocks used in construction of the so-called “Con-

federate saltworks” at Ross Hammock (which may

actually date to an earlier period), and for decorative

use, as in the first-floor fireplace at the State House

at Eldora which displays a decorative facing of

coquina.

Areas within and near the Seashore could be vital to

the defense of the capital of Spanish Florida at St.

Augustine. Mosquito Inlet was a potential “back

door” from the Atlantic Ocean to the natural

waterways to St. Augustine. The portion of the

inland passage within the Seashore also provided a

route for messengers. When attacks were feared or

when enemy vessels appeared off the St. Augustine

bar and attempted to blockade the town or intercept

Spanish vessels, messengers were dispatched to

Cuba in shallow-draft boats in attempts to deliver

pleas for help to Havana. To ensure that the message

arrived, the Spanish governor might send several

different messenger parties, advising them to put

out to sea at whatever point possible.

On May 25, 1740, when British expeditions from the

colony of Georgia (founded in 1732) threatened an

invasion as well as a blockade of the capital, Gov-

ernor Manuel de Montiano dispatched “a Spaniard

and three Indians” as messengers with the ambitious

goal of reaching the Florida keys “by the inside coast

channel, where it will be easy for the Indians to take

the little canoe across the shoals.” From the keys

they were to make their way to Havana. The British

were aware of the escape routes and had positioned

boats off the bar of Matanzas and frigates off the bar

of Mosquitos and in the channel off Cape

Canaveral. On June 4, the surviving member of the

unsuccessful canoe party, bearing three gunshot

wounds, returned to St. Augustine. The survivor

reported that the Spaniard had been killed by the

Indians of Mayaca, and his two Indian companions

had been slain at Hobe Sound, then called Jeaga or

Gega.

In a similar situation in 1812, St. Augustine was

again under siege by invaders from Georgia, now

citizens of the United States. Florida Governor

Sebastián Kindelán wrote to his superior in Havana

that “with total risk and with complete lack of confi-

dence for the success of the endeavor, I am sending

this correspondence to Your Excellency by the

bearer, Jayme Martinelly, directing him to go

through the interior to the Keys in a canoe. From

there I hope he will succeed in getting passage to

your island [Cuba].”

While these sorts of endeavors left little evidence

behind, it is very likely that these and many other

undocumented voyages of this sort used the inland

passage through the Seashore, perhaps putting to

sea at some inlet of the Indian River if the Ponce de

Leon inlet was under enemy surveillance.

The Seminole

As the Florida peninsula became increasingly

depopulated of indigenous peoples, Native Amer-

icans from areas in today’s Georgia and Alabama

relocated to Florida in several waves for over a

century. In 1716, 1717, and 1718, the Spanish suc-

cessfully enticed into Florida some Lower Creeks

from central Georgia, but little is known about the

first half century of relocation into Florida. Anthro-

pologist Brent Weisman illustrates the minimal

information in his remark that with respect to the

exact dates of Seminole colonization in Florida:

“The period 1716-67 is as much as we can say.”

Weisman and historian John Mahon divide early

Seminole history into two periods. The “coloni-

zation period” featured the initial migrations of the

80. P. A. Schmalzer, M. A. Hensley, and C.A. Dunlevy, “Background Characteristics of Soils of Kennedy Space Center, Merritt

Island, Florida: Selected Elements and Physical Properties,” Florida Scientist, vol. 64 (2001), 161-190.

81. Montiano Letter Book, May 13, 15 and June 11, 1740, letter nos. 198, 200, 201.

82. Kindelán to Juan Ruíz de Apodaca, 1812 August 27, East Florida Papers, Bundle 31E3, document number 31.

National Park Service 27

Creek towns into Florida. The “enterprise period”

saw an era of prosperity during British rule (1763-

1784) and restored Spanish rule (1784-1821) prior

to the cession of Florida to the United States.

During the colonization period, Creeks not only

migrated into Florida, but also diminished their ties

and identification with the Creek groups they left

behind. There continues to be much diversity of

opinion over the migrants’ original tribal affiliations,

languages, and even their name(s). The term “Sem-

inole” derives from a Muskogee term simano-li,

which itself had been appropriated from the

Spanish word cimarrón, with meanings of “wild” or

“runaway.”

Spanish colonial officials took

advantage of animosities between the Creek and the

English colonists in the Southeast and among the

Creek themselves to invite the disenchanted groups

to relocate to Florida. The Creek might have also

been looking for areas with more fertile soil than

their planting grounds in (present-day) Georgia

could offer after years of maize and bean culture.

While these migrating Creek were generally on

friendly terms with the Spanish regime in Florida,

there was little contact between the two. With little

interaction, Seminoles remained for the most part

outside the orbit of Spanish cultural influence. From

the European perspective in the middle of the eigh-

teenth century, these were Lower Creeks. From the

native perspective, they were what they had always

been, numerous bands with cultural and linguistic

similarities, but not a political unit. In truth, fac-

tions, disagreements, and treachery among the

native groups enhanced the Europeans’ positions in

interchanges with the natives.

By the time of the arrival of the British regime in

Florida in 1763, these Native American migrants

who had relocated from farther north were suffi-

ciently separated from their earlier associations and

previous homes and regrouped in Florida to be

called “Seminole.” The Seminole were clustered in

the Alachua prairie near present-day Gainesville, at

Miccosukee near Tallahassee, and to a lesser extent

among the rolling uplands northeast of Tampa

Bay.

In November 1765, after two years of British rule,

British officials and Seminole headmen signed a

treaty wherein the Native Americans agreed that

land for occupation by whites, and not natives,

would include all the seacoast as far as the tide

flowed, all the country east of the St. Johns River,

and the country west of that river confined by a line

beginning at the entrance of the Oklawaha River

into the St. Johns, then north to the forks of Black

Creek and then to the St. Mary’s River.

The Sem-

inole groups had been alternately dealing with or

resisting British traders and colonists for years. The

British establishment of a separate territory, a sort of

reservation, for natives in Florida was a change from

the Spanish pattern of interaction via the missions,

characterized by Native Americans laboring, wor-

shiping, and marrying among the Spanish citizenry

at outposts, ranches, and in the capital in St.

Augustine.

British Florida: Large

Enterprise Grants and

Small Homestead Grants

Great Britain emerged from the Seven Years War

(1754-1763) as the world’s most powerful empire.

In contrast to the recently terminated second

century of Spanish rule in Florida, the British did

not have to concern themselves with hostilities and

attacks from nearby enemy colonies; the entire

Atlantic coast of North America was in British pos-

session after 1763. With Florida, Great Britain

acquired a colony that had been emptied of its

inhabitants who were of European origin. In 1763

and 1764, all but a dozen Spanish Floridians had

83. Harry A. Kersey, Jr., The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes: A Critical Bibliography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1987), 1-2. Several scholars disagree with Kersey’s sequence of the evolution of the name.

84. James W. Covington, “Migration of the Seminoles into Florida, 1700-1820,” Florida Historical Quarterly 46 (1968): 340-57.

85. J. Leitch Wright, Jr. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the Muscogulge People (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 4-5; John K. Mahon and Brent R. Weisman, “Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee

Peoples,” in New History of Florida, Gannon, ed., 186-87.

86. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 186.

87. Charles Loch Mowat, East Florida as a British Province, 1763-1784 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, facsimile ed.,

1964 [1943]), 21-23.

88. The Seven Years War is often called the French and Indian War when referring to engagements that took place on the

North American continent. This war was known by other names in other areas of the world. The term Seven Years War

encompasses the entire conflict.

28 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

sailed from either St. Augustine or Pensacola to

other Spanish territory in the face of the arriving

British regime. Most of the exiles went to Cuba; a

few went to Campeche in today’s Mexico. A few

who remained from the Spanish period acted as real

estate agents to try to sell the exiles’ property in the

towns to incoming British settlers. It was a buyer’s

market, and sales were sluggish at best.

With the Proclamation of 1763, British adminis-

trators split the former Spanish colony into East and

West Florida by dividing it at the Apalachicola River

and attempted to encourage settlement. The procla-

mation provided for township grants of up to 20,000

acres and for family grants that were apportioned

according to family size. The grants were available to

whites only. The remaining Native Americans and

escaped Africans did not qualify as settler material

in the eyes of the British. Special terms were estab-

lished to attract veterans of the recent war and

Protestant inhabitants who might relocate from any-

where except the British Isles. After a three-year

period, grants were to be revoked if adequate devel-

opment had not occurred. But the reality of Florida

made that time period far too short. Elaborate and

ill-informed real estate and development schemes

were hatched in the context of the exuberant mind-

set of British entrepreneurs, who felt themselves

almost as invulnerable and unstoppable as the

Empire itself seemed to be.

Any orderly parceling of land grants necessarily

relied on surveys, but the actual measuring often fol-

lowed, rather than preceded, the land grants. In

1765, James Moncrief, a military engineer, made

two versions of a map of East Florida, one in

FIGURE 9. A general map of the southern British colonies in America, comprehending North and South

Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, with the neighboring Indian countries, from the modern

surveys of Engineer de Brahm, Capt. Collet, Mouzon, & others, and from the large hydrographical

survey of the coasts of East and West Florida, by Bernard Romans, 1776. (Library of Congress, G3870

1776.R6 Vault: Low 585)

89. Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 430-451.

National Park Service 29

Spanish and one in English, to depict claims from

the former Spanish period. His maps delineated the

Seashore as part of a grant belonging to the heirs of

Joaquín de Florencia and called Santa Ana de Apaja.

Moncrief also noted the “River Surruque.”

William Gerard De Brahm, who had gained recog-

nition in the British colony of Georgia for his

engineering abilities, arrived in East Florida in 1765.

His sketches, narrative, and surveys of Florida were

transformed into giant maps in England. Turtle

Mound always draws the attention of any visitor to

the area, then as now. DeBrahm denominated it “the

Rock” and referred to it as “Mount Belvedere called

by the Indians and Spanish Serekee.”

Turnbull’s New Smyrna

By far the largest and what became the most noto-

rious enterprise of British Florida was located a few

miles north of the Seashore at New Smyrna. In June

1768, a Scottish physician, Dr. Andrew Turnbull,

brought to his grant at Mosquito Inlet the 1,200 sur-

viving colonists of the 1,400 who had sailed with

him from Europe. Turnbull’s Greek wife was born

in the Anatolian Smyrna, now part of Turkey, and he

had traveled widely in the Mediterranean. Approxi-

mately half of the settlers were from the island of

Minorca, off the east coast of Spain. Others were

natives of Greece, Italy, and France. Turnbull chose

Mediterranean workers, who came as indentured

servants, based on the scientific theories of the day,

which advocated finding an optimum match

between the physical attributes of the workers, the

environment to which the workers were accus-

tomed, and the environment to which they were

headed. The geoclimatological theories were also

applied to matching Old World crops to the New

World environment. Minorca had been in the grip

of a famine, adding to its residents’ eagerness to

emigrate.

Turnbull intended to profit from an indigo plan-

tation at a time when the dye was much in demand

and production received special trade concessions

from the British government. He had originally set

out to transport 500 settlers, not 1,400. Turnbull’s

drastically overextended enterprise met with dif-

ficult terrain and cultural misunderstandings in the

Florida countryside. Prolonged indentures, the

terms of which were not understood by many set-

tlers, led to rebellions that marred the enterprise

and undermined its success.

When Turnbull’s workers arrived in 1768, James

Grant was governor of East Florida. He supported

Turnbull’s endeavor by sending troops to New

Smyrna to control rebellious workers in August

1768. Patrick Tonyn arrived in the capital of St.

Augustine in March 1771 to succeed Grant as gov-

ernor of East Florida, but Turnbull allied himself

with a provincial faction in opposition to Tonyn,

who denounced Turnbull and his colleagues as

traitors. When Turnbull’s workers appealed to Gov-

ernor Tonyn to intercede on their behalf, Tonyn

canceled the indentures of Turnbull’s workers and

offered the workers new home sites in St. Augustine.

The workers departed the New Smyrna enterprise

en masse.

Yet, the plantation’s original settlers and

their descendants continued to pass through and

attempt to develop lands near or within today’s Sea-

shore boundaries for years to come.

Like Britain’s Caribbean colonies, the Floridas did

not join the 13 North American colonies that would

become the United States in rebelling against Great

Britain in 1776. Nevertheless, prior to relocation of

Turnbull’s workers to St. Augustine, Florida admin-

istrators had been concerned about the loyalty of

the laborers at Turnbull’s plantation in light of their

non-British backgrounds. The Mediterranean

workers carried on clandestine communications

with Spanish priests in Cuba, especially for the

purpose of obtaining holy oils and water to use in

Roman Catholic rites. And there was good basis for

fears of spying and of attack against East Florida by

the Spanish, who provided supplies to the American

Revolutionaries and finally declared war on Great

Britain in July 1779. Some workers who had been

born on the island of Minorca joined the crews of

enemy privateers—American or Spanish—which at

times entered Mosquito Inlet.

Just to the south of Turnbull’s New Smyrna plan-

tation, in or near the current Seashore, four British

90. James Moncrief, Map of the Coast of East Florida, 1765, Ms. at Library of Congress.

91. Plan of Part of the Coast of East-Florida, original in Map collection, British Library, copy at St. Augustine Historical Society.

92.

Taylor and Norman, André Michaux in Florida, 53-54.

93. Patricia C. Griffin, Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans of Florida, 1768-1788 (St. Augustine: St. Augustine Historical

Society, 1990), 34, 92-94, 106.

94. J. Leitch Wright, Jr., Florida in the American Revolution (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975), 57, 67. Minorca is

one of the Balearic Islands off the east coast of Spain.

30 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

grants are known to have been made. The grantees

were Robert Bisset, William Elliot, Clotworthy

Upton, and William Faucitt. Knowledge of improve-

ments made on these lands comes mainly from

claims made to the British government by Bisset and

by Clotworthy’s heirs after Florida reverted to Spain

in 1784. These investors had looked to the more tra-

ditional work force of African slaves rather than

experimenting with indentured workers and geocli-

matological theories as Turnbull did.

Mount Plenty

One property just west of today’s Seashore

boundary belonged to Robert Bissett. In 1768,

Bissett received a 300-acre grant, which he called

Mount Plenty. He stated that he did not settle it,

however, until 1777, and the property was worked

for a period of just two years. Bisset blamed the

demise of the enterprise on the havoc caused in

1779 by a Spanish privateer that came through Mos-

quito Inlet and into the Hillsborough River (an old

name for the waterway leading south from the inlet

into Mosquito Lagoon) on which the plantation

fronted and “broke it up.” After the raid, Bissett

abandoned the settlement.

Bisset claimed that his land included a wooden

dwelling house measuring 20 by 30 feet and a good

storehouse with a loft of dimensions of 26 by 18 feet.

There were also a kitchen building which measured

16 by 18 feet, a hen house, and stable. A “town of

good houses” was capable of accommodating 70

slaves. He claimed to have built three sets of indigo

vats and cleared 143 acres. Bissett delighted in the

“very fine sour orange grove,” probably established

from seeds spread by birds and other animals. This

seems especially likely to be the case given Bissett’s

brief occupation of the property; a new grove could

not have produced so quickly. Bissett extolled the

abundance of fish, oysters, and green turtles and

described the transportation potential of the

waterway in terms of barrels of tar a barge could

move along the estuary, which was “navigable for

flats of 100 barrels tar burden.” But the claims by

relocated British subjects should be regarded as pre-

senting the sacrificed properties in the very best

possible light because most claimants expected

compensation for only a fraction of the losses

claimed.

Although no remains of the Bissett plan-

tation buildings have been found, the memory of the

site has been preserved on modern-day maps which

delineate “Bissitte Bay” just north of Oak Hill in

Mosquito Lagoon.

William Elliot Plantation

A few miles south of the Bissett grant

was the

sugar works of William Elliott (sometime spelled

Eloit), the southernmost plantation along the

Atlantic coast during the British occupation of

Florida. Bisset’s claim noted that sugar was grown

with “tolerable success” there. As described below,

Elliott’s sugar works were the first completed in East

Florida during the British occupation. Ruins which

lie just outside the park boundary in Merritt Island

National Wildlife Refuge may be remnants of this

facility. Recently discovered historical documen-

tation has placed the Elliott Plantation in this

vicinity. The ruins are documented as site number

8Vo160 in the Florida Master Site File. Archeo-

logical testing in the summer of 2008 may be useful

in confirming this theory. Indigo was also grown on

the plantation at one point, as evidenced in a letter

from Andréw Turnbull to Governor Grant dated

August 1769 and stating that Ross (Elliott’s

manager) would produce 50 pounds of indigo per

acre.

The following information on William Elliott and

his plantation was provided for this study by Dr.

Daniel Schafer, Professor Emeritus and former

Chair of the History Department, University of

North Florida. It is shown here in its entirety:

William Elliott was a London merchant, the

second son of Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3

Baronet of

Stobs, and Member of Parliament from

Roxburghshire, Scotland. His elder brother, Sir

John Elliot, became the 4

Baronet, and his

youngest brother, George August Elliot, became

a brigadier-general and Governor of Gibraltar

during the “Great Siege” by Spanish and French

95. Davison and Bratton, “Vegetation History,” 23.

96. Wilbur Henry Siebert, Loyalists in East Florida, 1774-1785 (Deland: The Florida State Historical Society, 1929) 2:250-59. The

available descriptions of the properties within the Seashore are conserved among the claims made to the British

government in hopes of receiving compensation for losses suffered by virtue of evacuating the Floridas when Great

Britain agreed to cede the Floridas back to Spain at the end of the American Revolution.

97. Bissett had nine separate Florida properties totally 9,500 acres. One plantation of 1,000 acres that produced indigo was

described as “2 miles back” from his property fronting the lagoon. Siebert, 2:250-59.

98. Unpublished mss., Dot Moore, FL Anthropological Society, January 27, 2008; copy in Canaveral National Seashore files.

National Park Service 31

forces, 1779-1783. In gratitude, Parliament

named General Elliott a Knight of the Bath. He

became Lord Heathfield, Baron Heathfield of

Gibraltar, in 1787.

In June 1767, after receiving warrants from

Parliament for grants of land in East Florida,

William Elliott gave John Ross of Arnage in

Aberdeenshire, Scotland orders to select and

settle tracts of land in Florida. Ross was told to

board the ship Aurora and travel to St. Augustine

to seek Gov. James Grant’s advice for locating

1,000 acres of land. Ross selected a tract on the

Halifax River–then known as the Hillsborough

River (aka Musquito River)–located eighty-five

miles south of St. Augustine, and named it Stobs

Farm in honor of the Elliott family land at Castle

Stobs, near Hawick in Roxburghshire. Elliott

would later acquire title to additional land,

including a 1,200-acre tract to the west of Stobbs

(the normal spelling in Florida), bounding west

on the marshes of Indian River, and a 20,000-

acre tract that was never developed, adjoining

Dunn’s Lake (now Crescent Lake) on the

southeast.

Elliott told Ross to purchase enslaved Africans in

Georgia for his labor force. He specified

“seasoned people,” Africans who had been in

America long enough to acclimate to the diseases

and language, and cautioned Ross to “buy as few

as possible as they are apt to pine on a change of

habitations.” Expenditures for the work force

were limited to £3,000 British Sterling. The slaves

were to be put to work immediately “to erect a

Negro lodgement” and “habitations for whites,

with gardens [and] walks.” By the end of 1768,

habitations were completed, land was cleared,

fenced, and planted with provisions crops and

indigo. An agricultural village was thereby

created at the point furthest south along the

Atlantic Coast that plantations were developed

during the two decades that Britain controlled

East Florida. Five years later, the Kings Road

would be completed between St. Augustine and

its southern terminus: Stobbs Farm. This road

extended north to the St. Marys River, linking

Britain’s East Florida and Georgia colonies.

Between 1766-1772, Stobbs Farm followed the

predominant pattern at East Florida estates,

striving for self-sufficiency in food production

while seeking profits from the cultivation of

indigo for export. Ross experienced some

commercial success with the first crops at

Stobbs, but a series of drought years caused

profits to drop precipitously. Elliott complained

often about the high cost of creating and

maintaining the settlement, and in 1772 he

warned Ross that unless Stobbs Plantation began

to show profits he would be replaced as overseer.

Ross had earlier recognized the limitations of the

dry and sandy hammock lands along Florida’s

Atlantic coastal ridge and begun draining

wetlands at Stobbs to create sugar fields, and

possibly rice fields, while at the same time

moving fresh water toward the coast through a

canal network to irrigate the higher and drier

hammock lands where indigo had been planted.

The product of an enormous outlay of human

labor by the enslaved Africans, the remains of an

elaborate water management network of canals

and causeways at Stobbs is still visible.

In 1771, Ross sent some of the slaves to an

undeveloped 1,200-acre tract that adjoined to

the west of Stobbs and extended all the way to

the marshes of the Indian River, a distance of

more than two miles from the shoreline of the

Halifax River. This tract was even wetter than the

terrain at Stobbs, and required a more elaborate

network of canals. At the new tract, Ross

constructed what William Elliott’s legatee,

Francis Augustus Elliot (possibly a nephew,

William died in 1779), described as “a complete

sugar works: one large mill house, one boiling

and curing house and twenty-eight Negro

houses.” It was complete with rollers and

crushing machinery, a firebox and chimney with

boilers and kettles, and two 120-gallon stills for

making rum. In addition, three dwellings were

constructed for the white overseers, along with a

kitchen and a wash house, structures for storing

the sugar barrels prior to shipment, barns,

stables, blacksmith and cooperage shops, all of

which were necessary for operating a sugar

plantation. Much of the stone and brick sugar

works is still standing, although in ruin, and the

miles of canals the laborers dug in 1771-1772 are

still visible at the site. This sugar works was the

first completed in East Florida during the British

occupation; it is Florida’s oldest standing sugar

processing facility.

Lieutenant Frederick George Mulcaster, a royal

engineer and the surveyor general of the

province, visited with John Ross several times in

1772 and dutifully reported his observations to

Governor James Grant, who was then in

London. Twenty acres had been planted by

January, Mulcaster wrote, and by June more than

fifty acres of sugar cane looked healthy and

green despite a bad beginning of the growing

season. Mulcaster reported that it would be

October before cane could be cut, prompting his

continuing concern that cold weather and frost

might harm the cane before the harvest could be

32 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

finished. Mulcaster thought the project was

“very hazardous, however, he [Ross] is resolved

to try and the mill is getting on as fast as the

people can work it.” The mill frame was in place

by June and it appeared to Mulcaster that the

related costs would not be excessive. It was the

cost of the “Negro gang” that Mulcaster judged

to be the major expense.

“John Ross is busy making sugar,” Mulcaster

reported on January 15, 1773, although at levels

below production standards in the West Indies,

with yields of less than a hogshead of sugar per

acre. “Ross is taking great pains,” Mulcaster

wrote. “I hear Mr. Elliott is displeased with him,

but if Ross fails it will not be for want of

application.” Six months later, Ross shipped

“700 weight of sugar and a puncheon of rum” to

England. One year later, Ross told Mulcaster that

he was making “600 weight of sugar every week.”

A combination of drought and early frost

lessened the expected output in 1774, yet Ross

was able to export approximately 10,000 pounds

of sugar, despite the Elliott properties being hit

by a severe storm that destroyed buildings,

uprooted trees, and killed three horses. The

estate also suffered a fire that burned a storage

barn filled with the year’s harvest of corn and

peas. The year of misfortune was capped in late

December when a sloop belonging to Elliott,

filled with a cargo of supplies, was lost at the

entrance to Mosquito Inlet.

The disasters experienced in 1774 convinced

Elliott to fire Ross and hire new managers.

Startup costs for the sugar works, cash outlays

for additional laborers, tools, buildings, and

horses had been more than Elliott would

tolerate. He later complained that his expenses

for the period 1770 to 1775 exceeded £7,700

Sterling. Annual expenses decreased after

completion of the sugar plantation, and income

for some years was promising. In April 1778, Dr.

Andréw Turnbull informed Elliott that 22,000

pounds of sugar in tierces

and a number of

barrels of rum had arrived at his wharf at New

Smyrna that would sell for more than £600

Sterling. Barrels of indigo dye valued at more

than £200 Sterling also awaited shipment.

Turnbull also sent bad news: Indians had stolen

four of Elliott’s horses.

A series of agents, including Alexander Gray, and

overseers, notably Alexander Bissett, operated

the Elliott properties after Ross’s departure.

Cultivation of provisions, indigo and sugar

continued at Stobbs, and at the 320 acres of

cleared and fenced fields at the sugar plantation

one and one-half mile to the west at the head of

Indian River. All operations ceased in November

1779, however, following a devastating plunder

by raiders from a Spanish privateer, following

Spain’s declaration of war against Great Britain

in June 1779. A claim for compensation filed

after Britain returned East Florida to Spain listed

losses of £660 Sterling when the Spanish raiders

destroyed a sixty-acre cane field that was ready

to harvest. The slaves were moved to a 500-acre

plantation north of St. Augustine on Pablo River

supervised by Alexander Bissett. In 1783, the

slaves at Pablo prepared 370 barrels of

turpentine that sold for £462 Sterling. When East

Florida was returned to Spain under terms of the

Treaty Paris in 1783, Bissett sent eighty-two

slaves to Jamaica, where they sold for £2,282.

The buildings on Stobbs at Mosquito Lagoon

and the Elliott sugar plantation on Indian River

were abandoned, and the livestock and

machinery sold at very low prices. Loyalist

refugees from the colonies in rebellion against

the Crown may have settled temporarily on the

Elliott property after 1779, but documentation is

incomplete. Alexander Bissett wrote in July

1783: “the three mills and the three worms with

all the lead and copper [presumably referring to

the two 120-gallon stills] are in Mr. Watson’s

store in Town [St. Augustine]. All the rollers and

bailors, as they were iron and very heavy is left at

Stobbs....” Bissett planned to hire a vessel to

retrieve the remaining machinery and sell it at St.

Augustine.”

100

Ross’s name continued to be associated with the

area long after the plantation was gone. “Ross” was

marked just above the head of Indian River in an

1837 map by J. Lee Williams.

101

The name survives

today in Ross Hammock along the western shore of

99. An old English unit of wine casks containing about 159 liters.

100. Daniel L. Schafer, “William Elliott, Stobbs Farm at Mosquito Lagoon, and the Elliott Sugar Plantation at Indian River”,

unpublished summary for CANA Historic Resource Study, May, 2008. Sources consulted for this essay: Letters from

Frederick George Mulcaster to Governor James Grant, in the Macpherson-Grant papers, Ballindalloch Castle, Banffshire,

Scotland (available on microfilm at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC); correspondence of Alexander Bissett,

Francis Augustus Elliott, William Elliott, John Ross, Robert Payne, and Andréw Turnbull, in the Claim of Heirs of William

Elliott, Treasury 77, The Papers of the East Florida Claims Commission, the British Archives, Kew, England; Daniel L.

Schafer, “St. Augustine’s British Years, 1763-1784,” El Escribano, The Journal of the St. Augustine Historical Society, St,

Augustine, FL, Vol. 38, 2001.

101. Taylor and Norman, André Michaux in Florida, 50.

National Park Service 33

Mosquito Lagoon. The road that joined Turnbull’s

New Smyrna with St. Augustine, which was known

as King’s Road, had an extension from New Smyrna

to the southern settlements and Elliot’s place. This

southern pathway was constructed under contract

by Robert Bissett for £1150 (about $5,000).

102

Bernard Romans, an assistant surveyor general

described another “road,” which he encountered as

he reconnoitered and mapped East Florida (see

Figure 8). Romans noted: “a road is cut to draw

boats out of Musketo Lagoon into this, which is

called South-hillsborough by De Brahm but com-

monly called Indian River; the savages call it Aisa

Hatcha, i.e., Deer River . . . the Spanish call it Reo

d’ais.”

103

In 1773, Lt. Gov. John Moultrie suggested

in a letter to Gov. James Grant cutting a canal across

the “Boat Hawl over” to connect the lagoon and the

river. This “road for boats” was probably the

portage which was later improved to become Old

Haulover Canal (8Br188).

Bartram and Michaux

Surveyors and government officials were not the

only persons to investigate the colony and report on

its attributes. Naturalist William Bartram twice

explored the southeastern portion of the North

American continent with a special emphasis on

describing and possibly discovering unknown bene-

ficial plants. On his first visit to Florida in 1766-67,

he accompanied his father John, also a well- known

botanist, and remained behind for about a year,

when his father returned home.

104

It may have been

at this time that he visited the “South branch of the

Mosquito river”, as briefly referenced in his well-

known journal describing his second journey to

Florida in 1774 and 1775. Traveling by canoe in

December, he navigated along the south part of the

Mosquito River and commented upon the bears and

deer, spotting 11 bears in the course of a single day.

He “passed over a pretty high hill” with palm trees

on its crest and surrounded by an orange grove.

Even today wild orange trees can be found in the

Seashore, reminders of past occupations. The hill

was “washed on one side by the floods of the Mos-

quitoe river, and on the other side by the billows of

the ocean.”

Bartram described the mound as “an entire heap of

sea shells and estimated it to be about one hundred

yards in diameter. Some sources speculate that this

could be Turtle Mound. It was near this site that he

first described the magnificent black and yellow

zebra heliconian butterfly (Heliconius charitonius),

which can still be seen today fluttering with ethereal

grace among the shadows at the edges of ham-

mocks

.The map which accompanied the book

describing his travels depicted wrecks along the Sea-

shore’s coast as well as its most renowned landmark,

Turtle Mound. Like so many colonial map makers,

Bartram chose Cape Canaveral as the southern limit

for his map.

105

Another renowned naturalist, Frenchman André

Michaux, visited the Seashore to collect plants in

1788. Although less well known in America than

William Bartram, Michaux gained international rep-

utation. Encouraged by King Louis XVI’s personal

physician, Michaux studied with Bernard de Jussieu,

at the time France’s most renowned botanist. When

Michaux arrived on this side of the Atlantic Ocean

in November 1785, he was titled botanist to the

king, giving him the prestige of a diplomat, but while

Michaux was in North America, his royal patron

was beheaded during the French Revolution.

Michaux spent 11 years roaming North America

identifying plants and collecting specimens. One

important product of Michaux’s travels throughout

102. Mowat, East Florida as a British Province, 68; Siebert 2: 251.

103. Bernard Romans, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida (1775; reprint, Pelican Publications, 1961), 182.

104.

Joseph Kastner, A Species of Eternity

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1977), 81.

105. William Bartram, Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia East & West Florida (1791, reprint, Mark Van Doren,

ed., New York: Dover Publications, 1928, reprinted 1955), 21-23, map interleaved between 30 and 31.

FIGURE 10. Zebra heliconian or longwing

butterfly. (CANA photo files, Christen Poole)

34 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

North America was the posthumous publication in

1803 of his Flora Boreali-Americana. Michaux is

noted for his activities in South Carolina, including

the gardens and nursery that he established in

Charleston, but his investigations in Florida are little

known.

106

For three months he traveled in Florida, identifying

and gathering specimens on Florida’s coastal islands

south of St. Augustine and along the St. Johns River.

Michaux arrived in St. Augustine on February 28,

1788. By March 24, Easter Monday, Michaux and

his party had reached the remnants of New Smyrna,

where they camped. Here he mentioned the aban-

doned orange groves and remnants of the failed

Turnbull colony. Michaux stopped at “the ruins of a

Plantation which had belonged to captain Besy

[Bissett]” on March 26. The following day he

paused to eat at the foot of Turtle Mound, which he

called Mount Tucker, and “collected several shrubs

and plants of the Tropics.” That evening, he camped

on the ruins of the Ross Place. Michaux, like

Bernard Romans, misidentified the site as “Captain

Roger’s.”

On the morning of March 28, Michaux and his

party crossed a former sugar-cane field to the Indian

River. Michaux noted seeing the Old Haulover, “the

most narrow place between the Indian River and the

Canal,” the latter being today’s Mosquito Lagoon.

He found some previously unknown plant species

in the woods along the Indian River, which

encouraged him to push farther southward and

endure the discomfort of trekking through saw pal-

mettoes. Every night the party saw fires that the

Indians made on the west bank of the Indian River,

but avoided contact with them. On April 6 they

turned back to St. Augustine and then headed to the

St. Johns River for more collecting.

107

Land Grants and Disrupted

Settlement in the Second

Spanish Period

Spain’s support of the American revolutionaries was

re-paid at the peace talks in 1782 with the resto-

ration of the Floridas to the Spanish empire. This

time it was the British who would evacuate,

although a relatively sizable number of British sub-

jects (perhaps as many as 500) decided to remain in

East Florida. The majority chose to relocate to other

parts of the British empire, since many of the immi-

grants had resided in Florida for only a short time.

They had fled to Florida mostly from South

Carolina and Georgia because their loyalty to Great

Britain made them targets for their rebelling

neighbors and Revolutionary occupation troops.

East Florida’s population ballooned to about 16,000

during the Revolution, but declined to 3,000 within

two years of the retrocession to Spain. In July 1784,

a Spanish governor once again took command of the

Florida peninsula.

108

Spanish policies generally continued land-grant

procedures set up during Florida’s British years.

The offering of homestead grants to settlers

occurred throughout Spain’s American colonies,

not just in Florida. Settlers migrating from the new

United States headed to faraway locations such as

today’s Panama as well as to closer colonies in areas

that are today part of the United States. After 1790,

new immigrants as well as residents in Florida could

acquire free land by establishing a farm or plan-

tation for ten years. These homesteaders could

acquire acreage apportioned by the number of

household members: 100 acres for the head of

household and 50 for additional members,

including slaves. Petitioners had to build adequate

structures and keep cattle to fulfill the grant require-

ments. At the completion of a ten-year occupation,

the colony’s governor could convert the grant to

settle into full ownership. After 1815, patriotic

service to Spain was added as a basis for grants.

109

Lands located within today’s Seashore boundary

offered a nearby inlet for access to the ocean and

also the ribbon of estuaries, which made settlement

attractive in an era when travel and hauling by canoe

and flatboat was much easier than over land. The

importance of water travel was affirmed by the

practice of granting tracts with the longer dimension

running inland to maximize the number of settlers

having access to waterways.

106. Taylor and Norman, André Michaux in Florida, xi-xii; Loutrell W. Briggs, Charleston Gardens (Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 1951), 14.

107. Taylor and Norman, André Michaux in Florida, xiii, 72-73, 105-07.

108. Ibid., 59, 61.

109. Works Progress Administration, Spanish Land Grants in Florida (Tallahassee: State Library Board, 1941), 1:xx-xxv.

National Park Service 35

Upon the return of Florida, Spain largely adopted

the practices established by the British in dealing

with the Native Americans rather than repeating the

missions and policies of the earlier Spanish period.

A Scottish trading firm, Panton, Leslie and

Company, was awarded a near monopoly on the

Indian trade in the Spanish Floridas, and Native

Americans mostly remained in their camps and vil-

lages.

110

But the Southeast was a region in flux after

the American Revolution. Citizens of the new

United States were pushing south and west into

Native American lands. Dispossessed of territory,

Great Britain still wanted to maintain a strong

influence and trading hegemony in the southeast.

Native Americans mixed and matched allegiances

among all the foregoing nations as they attempted to

survive as sovereign entities.

The desire by persons on both sides of the Florida-

U.S. border to make the Floridas part of the United

States brought disruption and destruction to

Florida’s rural settlements. But Florida had not

remained calm even before the invasion from

Georgia. Adventurer William Augustus Bowles

intended to set up an independent Indian state of

Muskogee in the Southeast with himself as its head.

Bowles’s father was a Scottish trader, his mother a

Creek.

111

He negotiated both the Indian and British

commercial worlds with ease. Bowles’s State of

Muskogee was contrived to cross international and

tribal boundaries. Bowles had the sponsorship of

British factions, who still wished to control trade in

the Southeast in spite of Great Britain’s cession of

territory. Sailing from the British Bahamas in 1788,

Bowles landed in East Florida at the Indian River

but was unable to win over enough Native Amer-

icans. Bowles reappeared repeatedly in the

Southeast, agitating Creeks and other tribes.

In 1800, Bowles and his followers captured the

Spanish fort of San Marcos on the St. Marks River,

south of today’s Tallahassee. Allied with Bowles,

Seminoles and/or Creeks raided East Florida planta-

tions, discouraging rural ventures. Slaves were the

usual booty–38 were taken from New Switzerland

plantation west of St. Augustine and carried to Mic-

cosukee, Bowles’s headquarters near today’s

Tallahassee. The raids spread fear and disruption far

beyond the areas where they occurred. Animosities

and rivalries among native factions fueled the

raiding as did resentment that was aimed at whites.

Settlers hesitated to risk their time developing prop-

erties as the risk of slave theft or escape in the

countryside increased.

More than once, white expeditionary forces massed

themselves along the Georgia border to invade East

Florida with the intent of setting up an independent

republic inspired by the French Revolution. The

infant republic would then ask for annexation to the

United States. Doubting the loyalty of recently

arrived residents living near the border, Spanish

Florida’s Governor Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada

and his council of war in January 1794 ordered

evacuation of lands between the St. Mary’s and St.

Johns rivers, destruction of buildings, and either

harvesting or destruction of crops in the field. The

Spanish officials’ goal was to deprive invading forces

of support and supplies. Evacuating settlers could

either leave the colony or relocate within it. Some of

the uprooted requested to resettle in the Mos-

quitoes region, but there is little follow-up

documentation about their location or tenure near

or on Seashore lands. After the summer of 1795,

when the invasion finally did take place and the

Georgians were routed from Florida, the governor

permitted former residents of the evacuated area to

return to the lands between the northern rivers and

possibly to re-establish themselves at better loca-

tions which had been abandoned by homesteaders

who had fled Florida.

112

The 1802 Treaty of Amiens among England, France,

Spain, and Holland brought a period of peace

among European powers. One result was the end of

British support for Bowles, whose activities were

thus curtailed. Spanish forces then captured Bowles

and imprisoned him in Havana, where he died in

1805.

113

Spanish Land Grants Around

Canaveral

The diminishing of European rivalries in the

Southeast and the end of Bowles’s ventures

110. Native Americans brought in hides and furs to company stores, where they received cloth, metal tools, guns, and

ammunition.

111. Not to be confused with the noted Cherokee chieftain Duwa'li, who was called “Chief Bowles.”

112. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 158; Spanish Land Grants, passim. Settlement that did not satisfy the homestead

requirements usually left minimal or no documentation in the land claims.

113. Wright, Creeks and Seminoles, 148; Wright, Anglo-Spanish, Chapters 12 and 13.

36 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

promised a more peaceful environment. Spanish

Florida residents were willing again to risk set-

tlement in the countryside on free land. In 1803,

Nicolasa Gómez petitioned for lands on the west

side of Mosquito Lagoon at the Ross Place, still

identifying the acreage with its British-era occupant.

She claimed that she already owned six slaves to

send there to work and intended to acquire more to

labor on the land on Mosquito Lagoon. Her request

described the desired grant as measuring a half mile

both to the north and to the south of the chimney

“presently standing on the plantation.” In 1817 an

observer swore that “before the invasion of Indians”

(probably in conjunction with the Patriot War in

1812, described below), that there had been a

chimney and oven as well as buildings. Gómez was

well acquainted with Florida. Her family had

departed for Havana in 1763 upon the British

takeover of Florida, and she returned to Florida to

re-claim family property in St. Augustine upon the

colony’s retrocession to Spain. The Gómez grant

appears to this day on topographic maps.

114

Lewis Mattair likewise petitioned for and received

lands on Mosquito Lagoon at “Ross” in 1801.

Mattair had lived in Florida since at least 1787. He

stated that he knew carpentry and sailing, but had

been raised in the countryside and was happiest as a

farmer. An 1809 survey of Mattair’s 300-acre set-

tlement depicted an orange grove bordering the

lagoon and a landing midway along the length of

Mattair’s shoreline. A ditch (zanja) of some sort

curved across the northeast quadrant of the grant.

In 1822, Mattair sold his lands to Antelm Gay. The

Oak Hill Quadrant, USGS topographic map, shows

a line in the center of the Gay grant, which approxi-

mates the line of the ditch shown on the 1809

survey. The survey also showed an “embarcardero,”

which may have served as a landing for Ross and

FIGURE 11. Land Grants, Township 19 South, Range 15 East. (Taken from Kathryn Davison

and Susan P. Bratton. The Vegetation History of Canaveral National Seashore, Florida. CPSU

Technical Report 22, (National Park Service, University of Georgia: Athens, 1986), Figure 5,

33. Primary source: 1852 General Land Office Plat of Township 19, South, Range 15 East.

Bureau of State Lands, Tallahassee, Florida (Cultural Resource Management, Inc., 1978)

114. Confirmed Claim G12; Claim of Nicolasa Gómez, Claim No. 82, Town Lot Claims, both in Spanish Land Grants Manuscript

Collection, Division of Historical Resources, Tallahassee, Florida (microfilm copies produced by Fla. Dept. of Agriculture.).

National Park Service 37

later occupants to load goods for transport to New

Smyrna and beyond.

115

Four decades later in 1850, D. H. Burr surveyed the

Gay and Gómez grants for inclusion in the township

maps compiled by the U.S. General Land Office.

Burr’s field notes referred to the “old chimney in the

middle of the orange grove of the Gómez grant” as

his point of beginning for his survey. His notes

referred also to an “old house” in the same orange

grove at a location at or near the chimney.

116

Infor-

mation in the 1809 Spanish survey, the 1852

Township Map, the field notes for the above two

grants, and the “Sketch Map of Ross Hammock”

included in the Bullens’ archeological report for

Ross Hammock suggest that the foundations and

hearth purported to be a Confederate Salt Works

(see Chapter Four) may be remnants of a structure

from an earlier period, such as the N. Gómez/Gay

house, already standing in 1803.

The 1852 Township Map shows a road running

southwesterly from Mosquito Lagoon at the mid-

point of the Gay Grant’s shoreline. The easterly

terminus of the road corresponds to the location of

the landing on the lagoon shown in the 1809 survey.

At the road’s western end, it joins the canal shown

in the Lucas Creyon Grant (Section 42). The 1818

survey of the Creyon Grant called the road a “cart

road (camino carretero).” John Griffin and James

Miller in 1978 noted sugar mill ruins at the Creyon

Grant and superimposed the ruins’ location onto

the 1852 Township Map included in their report.

117

There is some evidence of settlement on the east

side of Mosquito Lagoon in this period. Contem-

porary with Nicolasa Gómez, Gertrudis Carillo, a

widow, petitioned in 1804 for land south of Turtle

Mound and east of the Hillsborough River, about 16

miles south of Mosquitos (Ponce de Leon Inlet).

118

She claimed that she built a “turtle pond” and house

on the land. William Ulmer also claimed to have

settled on 200 acres south of Turtle Mound on the

seashore “in front of the Bisep plantation,” which

belonged to John Tenant during the English period.

Unlike the Gómez and Mattair endeavors, Carillo

and Ulmer did not convince the U.S. Claims Com-

mission that they had satisfied the homestead

requirements. Their claims for recognition of grants

made by the Spanish government were denied and

the land became U.S. public lands. Denial of own-

ership, however, did not necessarily mean that the

improvements were non-existent, but that some

legalities had not been met.

119

The Patriots War

The invasion of Spanish East Florida by American

filibustering forces in 1812 brought even more

destruction than had occurred in 1794-95. Fili-

buster was a nineteenth-century term for someone

engaged in fomenting insurrections in foreign coun-

tries, especially used for United States activities in

Latin America. The invaders called themselves the

Patriots, and adopted a plan resembling Bowles’

earlier one of establishing an independent republic,

which would soon ask for annexation to the United

States. U.S. President James Madison originally sup-

ported and abetted the expeditionaries. Spanish

policies and practices in East Florida had angered

U.S. slaveholders. Runaway slaves found refuge

among the Seminoles in Florida. U.S. slaveholders

worried that the example of permitting blacks in

Spanish Florida to carry firearms would inspire

115. Spanish Land Grants, Confirmed Claim G12.

116. Field Notes for Sections 39 and 40, Township 19 South, Range 35 East, originals in General Land Office Township Plats and

Field Survey Notes, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Tallahassee; Ripley F. Bullen, Adelaide K. Bullen, and

William J. Bryant, Archaeological Investigations at the Ross Hammock Site, Florida (1967), 3, 23-27. As the Gay grant

surrounded the Gómez Grant, surveyor Burr used some of the same points of reference along Mosquito Lagoon for

delineating both grants. The reference to the house appeared in the field notes for the Gay grant. The word “house” is

difficult to discern, typical of field notes, which often contain misspellings, inserted remarks, and symbols. The surveyors

were interested in establishing the boundaries of the sections within townships, not in recording features that did not

pertain to establishing boundaries. Thus important features within a section were not usually included in the field notes.

Features, such as buildings, fields, mills, and even sites of important events, sometimes were drawn onto the maps. But

the absence of features from township maps should not be interpreted that such features did not exist nor should the

location of features drawn inside sections be interpreted as precise.

117. Spanish Land Grants Conf. C88; James Miller and John Griffin, “Cultural Resource Assessment, Merritt Island National

Wildlife Refuge” (N.p.: n.p., 1978), 95-101, manuscript on file at NASA Kennedy Space Center.

118. At various periods, the northern section of Mosquito Lagoon, and occasionally the lagoon in its entirety, was known as

the Hillsborough River.

119. Spanish Land Grants, Unconfirmed Claims D8 and U1. The U.S. Claims Commissions were established in territories

acquired by the United States to scrutinize private lands claims dating from pre-American regimes. The Commissioners

had to decide the validity of the claims based on the laws of the sovereign regimes under which the land was granted.

Land claims deemed valid under the granting sovereign would be considered valid under U.S. ownership.

38 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

slaves in the U.S. to question the prohibition on

weapons for blacks in the U.S. and perhaps

embolden them to acquire weapons or even to rebel

against their masters. Additionally, international

rivalries in Europe were transferred to the Americas.

In Europe, Great Britain had occupation troops in

Spain as part of the war against Napoleon, and U.S.

diplomats feared British attempts to seize Spanish

Florida in the context of the hostilities. Thus,

southern U.S. citizens asserted that the acquisition

of East Florida would diminish the threat to the

slave-holding society and bring democratic prac-

tices to an area living under monarchical

strictures.

120

Madison’s opponents in the 1812 election year

attacked the president’s methods as duplicitous and

treacherous.

121

Public disapproval in the U.S. of the

Patriots’ expedition caused Madison to withdraw

official support, but the filibusters themselves did

not withdraw. Seminoles and their African-

American allies entered the conflict to protect their

lands and their freedom as the expeditionaries

ranged out beyond the areas of primarily white set-

tlements. Seminoles feared that the end of the

Spanish regime would make them vulnerable to

removal from the Florida peninsula under U.S. rule.

They struck out at whatever appeared to be a threat

and also took advantage of the upheaval to seize

blacks from Florida plantations and to destroy the

existing white settlements. Free blacks feared

enslavement or at least more restrictions under U.S.

laws and practices.

Raids and burnings engulfed the Florida coun-

tryside as far south as Mosquitos and west to today’s

Gainesville area. Areas that had been rebuilt after

the 1794-95 destruction were demolished anew. Set-

tlers were unable to set out crops, and cattle herds

were confiscated by the invaders, often to feed

themselves. The Patriots remained in Florida until

May 1814. The claims filed for compensation of

losses after the Patriot War do not contain any

claims pertaining to lands now part of the Seashore.

The reference in Gómez’s claim to damages by the

Indians suggests that destruction spurred by the

American invasion did take place, but that it might

well have been futile to file for compensation as only

depredations committed by the American forces

were eligible for compensation. Damages at the

hands of Indians did not qualify.

122

In spite of the disruptions in Florida, settlers con-

tinued to apply for land. Men who fought on behalf

of Spain could apply for land grants as reward for

their service by virtue of an 1815 royal order. These

land concessions were called service grants. In 1817,

Governor José Coppinger awarded William T. Hall

1,265 acres “lying between the Indian and Mos-

quitoes Rivers, called the Haulover.”

123

Hall

claimed that further “Indian disturbances” spurred

by the invasion of Amelia Island (just south of the

Georgia border) by expeditionary Gregor

MacGregor in June 1817 prevented him (Hall) from

settling the grant within the specified time and it

expired.

124

The governor adjudged Hall’s excuse

valid and re-granted the land in 1819. Robert

McHardy’s 1818 survey delineating Hall’s grant

depicts “Haulover road” that crossed the narrow

strip of land between Indian River and Mosquito

Lagoon. The Claims Commission rejected the grant

to Hall as it did with many other last-minute grants.

The Commission held that many of Coppinger’s

grants made in 1819 and later were without basis

and were made to place as much Spanish crown

land as possible into private hands. This would

reward loyal Spanish subjects, who could remain in

Florida with land of their own or sell it to incoming

residents. It would also lessen the amount of land

that would pass from Spanish royal ownership to

public ownership whenever the United States took

over Florida upon final ratification of the treaty of

cession.

In the spring of 1818, General Andréw Jackson

crossed into Spanish West Florida, took several

Seminole towns in the Tallahassee area and

occupied Pensacola. The United States justified the

invasion of foreign territory by claiming that the

Seminoles within Florida had provoked the U.S. to

protect itself. The troops shortly withdrew. This

approximately three-month-long fracas became

120. Rembert Patrick, Florida Fiasco: Rampant Rebels on the Georgia-Florida Border, 1810-1815 (Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 1954).

121. Many supported acquisition of Florida using straightforward activities, but not the “second-hand” manner set up by the

Patriots’ scheme.

122. Patriot War Claims Manuscript Collection, St. Augustine Historical Society; Gannon, ed. New History, 162-63.

123. Spanish Land Grants, Unconfirmed Grant H8.

124. Gregor MacGregor was one of many adventurers to raid and occupy Fernandina in the years following the Patriot War.

The Native American groups often took advantage of these unsettled conditions to make their own threats or raids.

National Park Service 39

known as the First Seminole War. It was a major

factor in the ultimate transfer of the Floridas to the

United States.

125

After lengthy negotiations, which were then fol-

lowed by delays, the treaty between the United

States and Spain to transfer East and West Florida to

U.S. control was fully signed and affirmed in 1820.

Spain itself was suffering from many problems, and

financing a viable military presence in the Floridas

was both too expensive and no longer needed.

During the 1810s, most of Spain’s American col-

onies had declared their independence. The

products of the Indies no longer sailed along the

Gulf Stream past Florida (and Cape Canaveral) to

Spain’s ports and markets. In the absence of other

colonies, Florida no longer served a vital function in

the Spanish empire. In July 1821, a Spanish flag was

raised for the last time in Florida, more than three

centuries after that banner first unfurled in the

Florida sea breeze.

Associated Properties

The associated properties for the European Incur-

sions and Euro-American Expansion, 1500-1820,

context are shell mounds and earthen burial

mounds primarily associated with prehistoric activ-

ities and a portage that was later enlarged by the

United States. No standing structures within the

Seashore boundary have been positively identified

with this context. The destructive events of the

colonial and Seminole War periods bear the blame

for the absence of standing structures more than any

subsequent demolition or neglect.

However, the ruins of a sugar mill (8Vo160) located

within the Creyon Grant lie within a few hundred

yards of the Seashore in the Merritt Island National

Wildlife Refuge. Recent evidence confirms that this

ruin was part of Elliott’s property that extended

from Mosquito Lagoon (within today’s Seashore) to

the Indian River. The mill was the first to be com-

pleted in East Florida during the British occupation

and is Florida’s oldest standing sugar-processing

facility.

126

The canal in Ross Hammock may date to the British

or Second Spanish Period as well, and the ruins

which are purported to be a Confederate Salt Works

may date to an earlier period, perhaps the Second

Spanish Period Gómez/Gay/Mattair plantations.

Finally, the portage noted by British surveyor

Bernard Romans might well have been the fore-

runner and physical basis to Old Haulover Canal.

Any physical evidence of the portage itself was

destroyed when the canal was created.

Turtle Mound

Although created during the prehistoric period,

mounds within the park served a function in the his-

toric periods. Mounds acted as guideposts for

colonial travelers. It is reasonable to conjecture that

Turtle Mound (8Vo109) served as a navigational

marker for European vessels and no doubt for

Native American boats at sea prior to the Euro-

peans’ arrival. Its presence on early maps is evidence

of this. Vessels sailing between Cuba and Florida

and up the North American coast could verify their

location in relation to Mosquito (Ponce de Leon)

Inlet by sighting Turtle Mound. These vessels

carried supplies, military personnel, slaves, exports,

and manufactured goods. Other ships came either

to attack or reinforce Florida outposts. Thus Turtle

Mound played a role in coastal shipping and inter-

national hostilities. Vessels bound for Europe that

were blown off course could get their bearings as

well when they sighted Turtle Mound.

125. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 189-92.

126. Schafer, “Stobbs Farm and Elliott Sugar Mill”, 2.

FIGURE 12. Undated view of Turtle Mound,

captioned “Turtle Mound, Composed entirely of

Oyster Shells.” (Royal Hubbell photographic

collection)

40 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Elliott Plantation (Sugar Mill Ruins

and Stobbs Farm)

What is possibly the original road from Stobbs Farm

(Ross Hammock) to the sugar mill ruins can still be

followed. The extensive network of canals and

causeways dug to drain and irrigate the land are still

visible. The sugar mill ruins consist of the remains of

at least three cut stone and brick features.

127

The

largest, 36 feet by 12 feet, served as the boiling room.

A series of holes in the top possibly held five large 6 -

7 feet diameter pans which were used to boil down

the juice extracted from sugar cane. Unlike later and

larger nineteenth-century mills, the cane was

ground utilizing animal power rather than steam.

A platform was constructed along the side of the

structure to aid in skimming and ladling the juice.

The other smaller ruins may have been a distillery

for rum and the base for a grinding mill. Additional

information will be obtained during field testing in

the summer of 2008.

Kings Road

Completed about 1773, the Kings Road linked

Britain’s East Florida and Georgia colonies,

extending from the St. Marys River to its southern

terminus at Stobbs Farm or the Elliott plantation.

An existing road trace leading into the trail from

Ross Hammock to the sugar mill ruins may be part

of the original route of this road.

William Bartram Markers (One and

Two )

In addition, two markers commemorate the work

within and near the Seashore of naturalist William

Bartram, who passed through the area in 1766-1767

as part of his journey through the southeastern

United States. Both are located in the southern

portion of the Seashore---one at Eddy Creek fishing

pier and the other at Parking Area #12. The markers

are 2-foot-by-3-foot metal tablets mounted on poles

with the seal of the National Association of Garden

Clubs at the top.

National Register Eligibility

Turtle Mound and Old Haulover Canal are already

listed on the National Register. The information

contained in this historic context will serve as the

basis for a review and, if necessary, revisions of the

National Register listings. As noted above, the

Southeast Archeological Center initiated fieldwork

in April, 2008 to nominate Turtle Mound as a

National Historic Landmark.

The identification of Old Haulover Canal as a

British-era portage is at this time inferential. If

future archeological investigations reveal a British

and a subsequent Spanish usage of the site, the

National Register nomination should be revised

accordingly.

The sugar mill ruins have been nominated for the

National Register. Cooperative research by the Sea-

shore, Refuge, NASA, NPS Southeast Archeological

Center, and local historians is scheduled for August,

2008, to conduct a Phase 1 archeological survey of

the site, including the Stobbs farm (Ross Hammock)

portion of Elliott’s holdings. Ross Hammock is

already listed on the National Register, primarily for

an extensive prehistoric shell midden and two burial

mounds, although the purported Confederate Salt

Works is included as a component.

Erected in the early 1980s, the two Bartram markers

are not currently eligible for the National Register

because of their age. It is, however, the policy of the

National Park Service to manage all commemorative

markers as cultural resources, and for this reason,

the markers have been entered into the List of Clas-

sified Structures. The same would apply to the Old

Haulover Canal marker erected in 2006.

127. Miller and Griffin, “Cultural Resource Assessment, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge”, 102-107.

National Park Service 41

Chapter Four: Transportation

Networks, 1820 to 1950

Not surprisingly, available modes of transportation

in the Seashore area influenced economic activities

based on the relative ease of bringing in supplies,

technology, and skilled workers and shipping out

agricultural and other products to markets. Trans-

portation difficulties that limited economic

development played a critical role in saving the area

from the over-development that has engulfed

almost all of the remainder of Florida’s east coast.

Many economic activities were dictated by the envi-

ronment, but their level of viability and profitability

were largely dependent on the available transpor-

tation modes. As the transportation situations

influenced the economic activity more than vice

versa, the following chapter will focus on economic

activity, reflecting the cause and effect sequence.

The peopling of the area of the Seashore and the

activities of its population very much reflected the

changing transportation situations. Understanding

the role of general transportation developments and

the nature of the terrain is key to understanding

change or at times the lack of substantial change

within the Seashore. The Seashore’s character was

and still is largely defined by water and waterways.

During the age of waterborne transportation, the

shallow nature of the waterways limited the size of

vessels that could use them. Overland travel on the

mainland evolved from draft animals to the railroad

to the personal automobile, but for many years,

waterborne transportation continued to provide the

final segment for goods and persons traveling from

and to the barrier islands. As overland transpor-

tation technology became more important after the

Civil War, much of the Seashore area remained iso-

lated and usually on the periphery of major

economic activity. Extension of railroad lines into

the Seashore by private corporations was not finan-

cially attractive, but ever-increasing use of the

automobile after about 1920 made the Seashore area

more accessible. Creating and improving roads

became financially feasible when done under gov-

ernment sponsorship, as was the case from the

1920s onward.

Florida as a United States

Territory

The Spanish colonies of East and West Florida

became a single United States territory in 1821.

128

With the arrival of U.S. law and control in Florida,

white citizens were eager to acquire lands that were

newly available under American hegemony. As in

the rest of the nation, residents of the new Florida

territory wanted transportation systems to facilitate

the delivery to market of products from their newly

acquired lands. Because of several presidential

vetoes of national legislation to create a Federally

funded transportation system, responsibility for

creating and financing internal improvements

devolved to the states. Florida, however, benefitted

from its status as a territory, making it eligible for

Federal funding of internal improvements. The

responsibility for planning civil improvements fell to

U.S. Army engineers. The improvements were

carried out by the Army or contracted to the private

sector.

129

Florida’s terrain and low elevations above sea level

made waterborne transportation more useful than

128. The years 1819 and 1820 are frequently cited as the dates of the acquisition of the Floridas. This variation results from

the perspective of the writers, who might use the dates of military occupation, the date of the signing of the Adams-

Onís treaty of cession by the United States or the date of the Spanish crown’s affirmation of the treaty. However, in July

1821, the Spanish flag was officially retired and U.S. laws and institutions became the framework for society. Gannon,

ed., New History of Florida, 164.

129. Virginia Bernhard et al., Firsthand America: A History of the United States, 3

ed. (St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press,

1993), 240-43; Tebeau, History of Florida, 140-43.

42 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

overland methods because standing water plagued

many of the overland transportation routes. Florida

citizens thought that the creation of canals or

improvements to the natural waterways (for

example, through the dredging of channels in

existing waterways) would be more beneficial than

building roads, since the latter would be muddy or

even impassable for much of the time.

Lack of adequate transportation was, however, not

the only impediment to the use of the newly

available lands. Seminole Indian groups occupied

much of the desirable land. Mahon and Weisman

assert that the Seminoles’ economic success and

prosperity were their undoing. The Seminoles had

demonstrated how productive their lands could be.

The policy of the United States was at first to restrict

the Seminoles within a limited area, then later, to

remove them altogether to western U.S. territories.

Removal would also end the threat to the institution

of slavery posed by the Seminoles. For many years,

the Seminoles had welcomed runaway slaves to

their villages. The status of African-American run-

aways within Seminole communities varied over

time and from place to place and remains the

subject of debate.

130

The situation was fluid: at

times runaways were welcomed as near equals, at

others runaways were separated to tend farming

enterprises of the Seminoles. Some of the runaways

were sold to whites, perhaps having been stolen

with that intent.

131

Under intense pressure from

whites eager to capitalize on Florida’s opportunities,

32 Seminole leaders in September 1832 signed the

Treaty of Moultrie Creek in which they agreed to

abandon 24 million acres in northern Florida and

migrate to lands located south of the Withlacoochee

River and north of the Peace River. The U.S. gov-

ernment agreed to subsidize the relocation with

food, physical improvements, and schools. When

sufficient food was not forthcoming and the Semi-

noles’ new environment proved insufficiently

productive, Seminoles began marauding beyond the

reservation’s boundary. The taking of whites’ cattle

became an especially inflammatory issue.

132

Over time, Seminoles attempted to return to their

former lands north of the Withlacoochee, which

were now occupied by white farmers. Two more

treaties were negotiated, providing for removal of

the Seminoles from the Florida peninsula to lands

west of the Mississippi. The 1832 Treaty of Payne’s

Landing was subsequently denounced by Seminole

leaders because some claimed that their signatures

or marks were forgeries. The treaty provided for the

Seminoles’ inspection of targeted compensatory

lands in the West. The Seminole leaders disap-

proved of the new location and objected to the

political situation as well. The western lands were

located among the Seminoles’ long-standing Creek

enemies. The treaty additionally provided that the

Seminoles would be absorbed into the Creek

Nation, a situation that was totally unacceptable to

the Seminoles. Some commentators have placed

blame for these misunderstandings on the inter-

preters who translated for U.S. officials and

Seminoles during the negotiations in Florida.

133

In the Treaty of Fort Gibson signed the following

year, 1833, the Seminoles agreed to move to the

Arkansas Territory. U.S. officials tried to speed up

the removal that had been agreed to in the third and

most recent treaty, while some Seminoles con-

tended that the treaty gave them the right to remain

on the reservation lands in Florida until 1843, when

the 20-year period referenced in the 1823 Moultrie

Creek agreement would terminate. These three

treaties reflect the larger Indian removal policies

and contemporary actions by the U.S. government.

Historian John Mahon asserts that the Seminoles

regarded the policies as unjust and had come not to

expect justice. In the end, the Seminoles refused to

abide by the documents and war was the result.

134

In February 1835, a severe freeze in Florida devas-

tated agriculture, damaging the sugar enterprises

along the Halifax River and in the Mosquitos area

and destroying citrus trees. The loss of profits and

sustenance exacerbated existing tensions, and

simultaneous attacks by Seminoles on white settlers

at Christmas 1835 marked the beginning of con-

certed resistance. On Christmas Day, Seminoles

destroyed plantations east of the St. Johns River in

today’s Volusia and Flagler Counties that were still

recuperating from the previous winter’s freeze.

Three days later, Seminoles ambushed Major

Francis Dade’s troops near today’s Bushnell, killing

all but a handful of Dade’s force of more than 100.

The Second Seminole War had begun, although at

130. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 192.

131. See St. Johns County Public Records, Deed Book A, pages 99-107, for such transactions. Upon Florida’s acquisition by the

United States, St. Johns County encompassed the entire Florida peninsula east of the Suwanee River.

132. Gannon ed., New History of Florida, 216-17; John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainesville:

University of Florida Press, 1967), 42-49.

133. Mahon, Second Seminole War, 74-85.

134. Ibid., 82-86, quote on p. 86.

National Park Service 43

the time the conflict was known as the “Florida

Wa r. ”

135

White settlers and farmers, including those in the

Seashore area, took refuge in towns as the Semi-

noles burned houses and barns in outlying areas.

Territorial Governor Richard K. Call activated the

militia, and the U.S. Army also took the field. White

volunteers from Tennessee, South Carolina,

Georgia, Louisiana, and as far away as Missouri

arrived to fight. The multiple fighting forces

answered to no single commander, vied with each

other for glory and pay, and created factionalism

and at times an almost fratricidal atmosphere

among the Indian fighters. As in so many other wars

before and after, the excitement and fun of the fight

soon turned to the tedium of prolonged stays in

dreary camps and the real prospect of injury or

death. The volunteers found the Seminoles to be

formidable fighters, not a day’s amusement.

136

During the Seminole War, land records for the Sea-

shore area, then part of Mosquito County, were

taken to St. Augustine for safekeeping. When

Florida first became an American territory in 1821,

it was divided into two counties, with Escambia

135. Mahon, Second Seminole War, 102-13.

FIGURE 13. Detail from map of Florida by Charles Vignoles, 1823. (University of Florida Map and

Imagery Library)

136. Ibid., 137-38.

44 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

County encompassing part of northern Florida and

the Panhandle while St. Johns County comprised

the rest of the state, including the Seashore area. As

the state was settled, other counties were formed

including Mosquito County in 1824. Using the old

Spanish name for that section of the coast, it

extended from just south of St. Augustine nearly to

Ft. Lauderdale, a frontier outpost established in

1838, and encompassed most of central Florida. In

1844, the southern half of the county was reorga-

nized as Marion County, and the following year, the

same year that Florida achieved statehood, Mos-

quito County was renamed Orange County, and the

county seat was moved from Enterprise to Mellon-

ville (now Sanford). In 1854, Volusia County, which

encompasses the northern portion of the Seashore

area, was created from that part of Orange County

that lay east of the St. Johns River.

137

Historian Charlton Tebeau pointed out that the

Seminole war gave a healthy boost to steamboat

traffic in Florida.

138

At one time during the conflict,

forty steamboats were engaged in supplying the

army or in removal of Native Americans. The

waterways to accommodate the boats were

improved and reliance upon the vessels increased.

The estuaries of the middle Atlantic coast of the

Florida peninsula provided the basis for a natural

route for waterborne traffic, but they did not

present an unbroken water passage. Mosquito

Lagoon and the Indian River were (and still are)

separated by a narrow strip of land. A portage

known as the Haulover provided the shortest land

passage between the two bodies of water.

Repeatedly, the U.S. military maintained the portage

in some manner during conflicts, only to let its use-

fulness diminish by virtue of neglect in peaceful

times.

During the Second Seminole War, the U.S. Army

shipped quantities of supplies south up the St. Johns

River and also south along the Mosquito Lagoon-

Indian River route to support military activities.

Because the Haulover portage was strategically

important during the Seminole wars, a fortification

called Fort Ann was built in 1837 at its western ter-

minus. At times, 800 to 1,000 troops were stationed

on the narrow spit of land in order to carry supplies,

which could then be forwarded to troops further

inland. The endeavor to supply the U.S. Army

occupied both the Navy and the Army. Army

surgeon Jacob Rhett Motte provided an excellent

account of the terrain, vegetation, animal life, and

soldiers’ activities during his stay at Fort Ann. Motte

reported that the troops used Mackinaw boats,

brought with them and having been constructed

expressly for the navigation of the shallow lagoons.

Motte also provides a description of how the troops

celebrated Christmas with “gopher soup and

whiskey toddy” as well as boisterous singing at Fort

Ann. The fort was abandoned after the winter of

1837-1838.

139

Given that the length of the portage at the Haulover

was less than half a mile, the possibility of dredging a

canal to facilitate water transport was obvious. First

Lt. Jacob Blake surveyed the Haulover in 1843 at the

orders of General William Worth, but Blake con-

sidered the continuation of the portage to be a waste

of manpower, since the off loading, loading, and off

loading again could be eliminated by a canal. A

topographical engineer, Blake found that the dis-

tance between the two waters was only 725 yards

and the highest point 8

½ feet above the level of the

water. To prevent his recommended canal from

filling with sand, he suggested that 8-inch square,

12-foot-long piles be driven into the ground, spaced

12 feet apart. Two-inch planks should be riveted to

these piles to strengthen the sides. He further sug-

gested that the bottom be covered with 2-inch

planks as well to control shifting sand. He believed

that these precautions should make the canal

passable at all times. Despite support for the project

from Quartermaster General Thomas Jesup, who

had his own experience of the portage as a field

commander during the Florida War, the canal was

not funded by the War Department.

The construction of the canal had to wait. When

government land surveyor Henry Washington sur-

veyed for section lines in 1844, he made no mention

137. Jerrell H Shofner, History of Brevard County (Stuart, Fla.: Brevard Historical Commission, 1995), 1:60; Michael G. Schene,

Hopes, Dreams and Promises: History of Volusia County (Daytona Beach: New-Journal Corp.,1976), 22, 59.

138. Charlton Tebeau, History of Florida, 142.

139. George E. Buker, Sun, Sand, and Water: A History of the Jacksonville District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1821-1975

(Fort Belvoir, Va.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; [Washington, D.C.: Superintendent of Documents., U.S. Government

Printing Office, distributor, 1981]), 114-15. Letter from William J. Worth to Adjutant General, 1843, December 12,

Clarence E. Carter, ed., Territorial Papers of the United States: Florida Territory (Washington, D. C., 1956-1962), 24: 804;

Jacob Rhett Motte, Journey Into the Wilderness: An Army Surgeon’s Account of Life in Camp and Field During the Creek

and Seminole Wars, 1836-1838, James F. Sunderman, ed. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953), 153,168. Motte

reveals himself as quite a reader, referring in his account to “Sam Veller” [Weller], a character created by Charles Dickens

only the year before in the serialized numbers of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. A Mackinaw is a flat-bottomed boat

with pointed prow and square stern much used on the upper Great Lakes.

National Park Service 45

of a canal at Haulover.

140

U.S. Army Lt. Horatio

Wright oversaw the construction of a shallow canal

across the Haulover in 1853 and 1854, according to

an 1881 report by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The cut was limited to a bottom width of 8 feet and

a depth of water of 2 feet, with vertical banks where

coquina rock occurred, and with side slopes of 45

degrees in sand.”

141

Other sources, however,

reported the construction of a canal 14 feet wide

and 3 feet deep. This work was attributed to Dr.

George E. Haws under a U.S. government contract

using slave labor.

142

Whatever its dimensions, the

canal, which was designed expressly to accom-

modate the Army’s small-boat operations, was

completed just before the Third Seminole War,

which began December 18, 1855, when Seminole

warriors opened fire on a detachment of U.S. sol-

diers in the Everglades. The war was fought mostly

in the Everglades, where the Seminoles who had

evaded removal had retreated. On May 8, 1858,

Colonel Gustavus Loomis declared the war at an

end, each side having lost 40 men.

143

After the war’s

end, Army engineers did not maintain the Haulover

Canal, although the Annual Report of the Chief

Engineer, 1882, described the canal as still being 8

feet wide at the bottom, 12 feet wide at the water’s

surface, and 2 feet deep.

The Civil War

In 1860, the area of the Seashore remained sparsely

settled, with the state’s population remaining con-

centrated in northern Florida and a few Panhandle

counties that were suitable for large-scale cotton

production. On January 10, 1861, delegates to a

special convention overwhelmingly approved

Florida’s secession from the Union, and the state

existed as an independent political entity for almost

a month before joining the Confederate States of

America.

During the war, Florida supplied much-needed

corn, beef, pork, and salt (boiled down from sea

water) to the Confederacy, and its long coastline

provided many opportunities for ships to evade the

Union blockade. Controlling the coast became an

important Federal war goal, and Union forces cap-

tured many of Florida’s port towns and cities, which

limited imports needed by the army and state resi-

dents and also prevented the export of cotton, the

South’s only viable source of foreign exchange. In

March 1862, Federal forces occupied Jacksonville

for the first time, gaining control of the entrance of

the St. Johns River and preventing cargo from

reaching locations along the river west of the Sea-

shore area. Jacksonville itself was alternately in the

hands of Union and Confederate forces during the

war, but Union forces maintained control of the

mouth of the St. Johns. Ships from the Union’s

South Atlantic Blockading Squadron prowled the

Indian River and Ponce Inlet areas, but the small

boats of the residents could sometimes traverse

shallow waters that barred larger vessels and escape

with their cargo. In spite of the patrols, Ponce de

Leon Inlet, or Mosquito Inlet, continued to offer

attractive possibilities to the Confederates for

bringing in goods. The proximity of the middle

Florida coastal area (including the entrances to

Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River) to the

British Bahamas enabled small boats to make the

ocean journey, sometimes with no more than a

single bale of cotton to be sold in the Bahamas in

exchange for necessities. But the Union blockade of

the Florida coast was increasingly effective after

summer 1863 and eventually prevented almost all

navigation.

144

The blockade forced residents of the Confederacy

to be increasingly self-sufficient since the entry of

goods and the exporting of cotton, which had pro-

vided cash to purchase imported goods, was denied.

Many residents were, of course, already mostly self-

sufficient and the blockade affected their lives very

little. The wealthier residents and Confederate

armies, however, felt the losses imposed by the

blockade, and it ultimately was a major factor in the

destruction of Confederate morale.

145

On March 21 and 22, 1863, the Union vessels Henry

Andréw and Penguin passed through Mosquito Inlet

to extend the blockade to the inland waterways.

With a cutter and a whaleboat from the Penguin,

about 21 men proceeded south on Mosquito

Lagoon 15 to18 miles. On the return, they were

attacked and, according to official military corre-

spondence, three Union men were killed. Among

several tasks, one of their assignments had been to

140. Field Notes for Section 29, Township 20 South, Range 36 East, Township Plats.

141. Lt. Col. Q. A. Gillmore, Report, December 3, 1881 in 47 Cong, 1

Session, Ex. Doc. 33, January 1882.

142. See Shofner, History of Brevard County, 1: 62, 67 n.9, citing Hanna and Hanna, Florida’s Golden Sands, 246. Many works

cite Florida’s Golden Sands as the source of information on the construction of the canal, but Hanna and Hanna offered

no source citation for their statement.

143. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 200-1.

144. Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, 116.

145. John E. Johns, Florida During the Civil War (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1962).

46 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

prevent the burning of live-oak logs, which had

been abandoned in the area but was considered U.S.

Government property. Confederate forces may have

made some use of timber that had been left, and the

Federals were concerned that the remaining timber,

which could be of value to the Northern war effort,

might be burned by the Confederates. The har-

vesting of live oaks in Florida for shipbuilding had

begun in the British period, if not earlier (see dis-

cussion in Chapter Five below), and the U.S. Navy

correspondence from the Civil War makes no

mention of cut timber being found to the south of

the inlet, within the boundary of today’s Sea-

shore.

146

However, it had been reported on March

4, 1863, that about 40,000 feet of timber was found

on the north side of the inlet about 4 miles up the

Halifax River. A month later, it was reported that a

timber stockpile had been burned.

147

During the Civil War, Florida and the rest of the

South found that they had to find new sources for

commodities that had been supplied by the North.

This often meant producing the commodities them-

selves, but production of necessities during wartime

was made more difficult by the shortage of labor

that resulted from so many men on military duty.

Destruction in war zones made production even

more difficult as Union blockaders not only

attempted to prevent the arrival of goods, but also

destroyed local resources. Union officials decided

that eliminating the Confederacy’s sources of salt, a

necessity for food preservation in the days before

refrigeration, would help to shorten the war.

Salt became a scarce and expensive commodity in

the Confederacy, which promised profit and special

treatment for anyone that could continue producing

salt. In the Spring of 1862, the price of salt rose as

much 700 percent, and as salt production became

ever more vital to the war effort and to civilian sur-

vival, the Florida state government offered

exemptions from military service to salt producers.

Such exemptions were also available for cattle pro-

duction, since the war effort throughout the South

increasingly relied on beef from Florida after Con-

federate defeats along the Mississippi River in 1863

cut off the supply of cattle from west of the

Mississippi.

148

146. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (hereafter ORN), Series I (Washington:

Government Printing Office, 1901), 12: 645-51.

147. Ibid. 655-56, 768-69, 783.

FIGURE 14. “Coast of Florida from St. Mary’s River to Cape Canaveral,” 1861-1862,

Cape Canaveral is at lower left. (Official Records of the Union and Confederate

Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 12, (Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office, 1891).

148. Johns, Florida During the Civil War, 129; Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 240-44.

National Park Service 47

Because of its proximity to the ocean, the Seashore

area had the potential to support salt production

from sea water. Most of the historical studies of Civil

War salt production in Florida have focused on the

Gulf Coast—Cedar Key, St. Marks, Apalachicola—

because that was the favored location for salt

making, although at the beginning of the Civil War,

salt-making was a minor and almost home-based

industry. Florida’s only commercial producer of

sea-salt was in Key West, and it used a technology

that was totally different from that adopted by

nearly every other maker along the coasts of

Florida.

149

Florida’s small, home-based seaside “plants” usually

consisted of a large kettle with a capacity ranging

from 60 to 100 gallons of water, set in a brick or clay

furnace. They were usually located a few hundred

feet inland, back from high tides and winds, where a

shallow well was dug to produce a constant supply

of salty water. Sometimes water was transported

from holes near the waterline. The salty water was

boiled until only a thick brine remained, taking care

not to burn the salt on the bottom of the kettle,

which would render the product unusable. The

brine was then dipped up and placed on clean

boards to dry and bleach, or sometimes the brine

was poured into a barrel, and the water poured off

the top after the salt had settled to the bottom. This

method sometimes produced a poorly drained

product that contained elevated amounts of mag-

nesium and lime, making the salt too bitter for use.

The best procedure was to let the brine boil, then

cool under a steady but low fire. As the crystals

formed they would fall to the bottom and the

remaining briny water could be poured off. But this

method, which reduced impurities, produced a

great deal of smoke and at night provided light by

which the Union blockaders could pinpoint the salt

works.

150

Hauling the salt to a market was also a

problem in many areas of Florida where marshy

terrain and soggy roads slowed carts or made

passage impossible, but the estuarine network

within the Seashore area made waterborne trans-

portation of bulky or heavy freight much easier and

less costly than by overland means.

Local histories tell of the destruction of a salt works

(probably near Oak Hill) by the party of men from

the Henry Andréw and Penguin, but the letter of S. F

Dupont, Flag Officer, Commanding, South Atlantic

Blockading Squadron, written March 24, 1862,

immediately after the Union sortie and purported

destruction, does not mention the disabling of a salt

works as an accomplishment of an assignment oth-

erwise gone awry.

151

Ruins located at Ross Hammock (CANA 034/

8Vo213) have been described by some as a salt-

works site destroyed by Union troops, although not

all archeological investigators have agreed. Ross

Hammock would have offered proximity to the raw

resource, isolation for secretive production, and

access to waterborne transportation. Ripley and

Adelaide Bullen and William Bryant examined the

site in 1967, clearing the foundations of the pur-

ported salt works and making a small surface

collection. They noted that the basic construction

was coquina and asserted that “the construction,

associated artifacts, and location of this foundation

all agree with the theory that it was an 1861-1865

salt evaporation plant.” But the absence of detailed

field notes regarding excavation trenches and test

units leaves a void in the site’s history as no such

notes have been found at the Florida Museum of

Natural History at the University of Florida.

152

Additionally, the necessarily ad hoc and furtive

nature of wartime salt production left no written

documentation of the location or even existence of

a salt works at Ross Hammock. Local lore remains

the major source of information, but if the ruins

could be verified as a salt works, it would be a

unique site because of the relative lack of such

wartime salt-making sites along Florida’s Atlantic

coast. An archeological investigation by SEAC in

August 2008 uncovered colonial period artifacts

indicating that the ruins may date either to the

British or the second Spanish periods in Florida.

Federal seizures of British and Confederate vessels

continued throughout the war. Some occurred close

to the Seashore area. For example, on February 25,

1864, the U. S. S. Roebuck seized the blockade-

running British sloop Two Brothers in the Indian

River. The British ship was carrying a cargo of salt,

liquor, and nails. Two days later, the Roebuck seized

the British blockade-running schooner Nina with a

cargo of liquors and coffee at Indian River Inlet. The

Roebuck also captured the schooner Rebel with a

cargo of salt, liquor, and cotton at Indian River

149. Johns, Florida During the Civil War, 127; Dr. Joe Knetsch, “More than a Condiment: The Importance of Salt During the

War Between the States,” Paper presented to the Winnie Davis Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy,

September 16, 1995. Typescript copy at P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History.

150. Knetsch, “More Than a Condiment,” using description provided by F. A. Rhodes.

151. ORN, 12: 645-46.

152. Bullen et al., Archaeological Investigations at the Ross Hammock Site, Florida, 23-25, quote on p. 25; David M. Brewer,

“An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Overview and Assessment of Mosquito Lagoon,” 128.

48 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

(Sebastian) Inlet. On April 7, 1864, the U.S.

Schooner Beauregard captured the English

schooner Spunky off Cape Canaveral. The Spunky

was en route to the Bahamas with a cargo of cotton.

Previously, in August 1863, the Beauregard had been

stationed at the Haulover Canal to prevent traf-

ficking along the inland waterway.

153

As it had for

centuries, the Haulover continued an important

connecting function during the Civil War, now in

the context of Confederate cargoes trying to evade

the blockade. Both Confederate and Union forces

used the Haulover to move goods and men.

The Civil War ended in April 1865, and in many

areas of the former Confederacy, Union occupation

troops already in place at war’s end continued to be

the de facto government or at least the guardians of

civil order. First the President, then the United

States Congress oversaw the administration of civil

government in the defeated Confederacy. In 1867

Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act.

The act maintained military rule, ordered new state

constitutional conventions, opened voting to black

citizens and denied the vote to former Confederates

who did not take a loyalty oath to the United States.

The Republican Party briefly surged to dominance

in the South. Republicans advocated a strong, cen-

tralized state government, and the 1868 Florida

constitution reflected that centralization, making

many formerly elective local offices, appointive by

the governor.

In 1877, Reconstruction government ended when

Federal troops were removed as part of a tacit

agreement between North and South over the dis-

puted presidential election of 1876. The civil rights

of ex-rebels were now restored and former Confed-

erates took over the legislature. A new state

constitution was passed in 1885, weakening the state

executive branch and returning decisions to the

local electorate. Many of the local positions that

became appointive under the 1868 constitution

returned to elective status under the 1885 doc-

ument. With the end of Reconstruction, Florida

voters fell back into the pre-Civil War pattern of

Democratic Party control.

154

Transportation and Public

Lands

The new state government wanted to attract

northern capital and realized that free land was

what state officials could offer. To encourage both

canal and railroad development, the state offered

huge amounts of acreage for each mile of canal dug

or track laid.

Even after the Florida East Coast Railroad reached

the area of the Seashore in the 1890s, waterborne

transportation remained important. Sailing ships

had used the waters of Mosquito Lagoon since the

sixteenth century; increasingly in the middle nine-

teenth century, steamboats were used, especially for

longer trips. Steamboats played an important role in

developing trade and tourism in central Florida

after the Civil War. Steamboat transportation in

Florida grew during the Reconstruction era and

enjoyed boom days from about 1875 to 1880. Unlike

big ships, smaller steamboats could navigate beyond

open waters into coastal lagoons, lakes, and rivers.

Steam vessels served well in the shallow waters of

Mosquito Lagoon, whose average water depth is 3

feet. Use of steam instead of sail greatly improved

maneuverability in the narrow channels and did not

require the deeper draft needed by sailing vessels to

counterbalance the mast and sailcloth. Steamboats

were able to transport goods more directly to and

from interior regions that had been isolated by

shallow water. Steamboats regularly used the ports

of New Smyrna for travel to points north and Titus-

ville, somewhat later, for trips to Melbourne and

points south. Residents of the Seashore area itself

often still used sailboats to reach New Smyrna or

Titusville, or traveled overland to a steamboat

landing on the St. Johns River.

The St. Johns River, sometimes almost blocked by a

shifting sand bar at its mouth, was navigable by

smaller steamboats. Now oranges grown in the

central region could be shipped via the St. Johns

River from the river’s ports in central Florida, such

as Sanford (Mellonville), to Jacksonville, and then to

markets in the north.

Steamboat travel was also one of Florida’s early

tourist attractions. During the Civil War, news cor-

respondents had gone beyond their primary

function of reporting war stories to produce stories

and pictures of locations in the South. Florida’s

healthful climate and seemingly exotic natural assets

began to attract a handful of winter tourists. Physi-

cians recommended visits to Florida, particularly for

respiratory diseases. James E. Ingraham, who would

become highly effective in administering the busi-

nesses of Florida railroad pioneers Henry Sanford

and Henry Flagler, came to Florida in the 1870s

153. Naval History Division, comp., Civil War Naval Chronology (Washington, D. C: Department of Navy, 1971), passim.

154. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 249-68; Bernhard et al., Firsthand America, 462.

National Park Service 49

when he was thought to be in the final stages of con-

sumption (tuberculosis). In 1882, he was described

as enjoying”vigorous health” as a result of his move

to Florida, and he lived on to help mold Florida for

more than 40 years.

155

Winter tourists took picturesque steamboat trips

beginning in the late 1870s to small towns and

resorts along the rivers and lagoons of today’s Intra-

coastal Waterway and along the St. Johns River and

its tributaries. The truly adventurous among them

enjoyed a combination of semi-tropical climate,

beautiful vegetation, good hunting, and excellent

fishing that no other state could offer. Excursions

along the St. Johns River became known as “jungle

cruises.” Through words and engravings, potential

tourists and armchair travelers learned about the

lure of central Florida from late-nineteenth century

popular magazines, particularly Harper’s New

Monthly Magazine. Publications, such as the pam-

phlet A Tourist & Hunter’s Guide to Indian River

Country, 1889-1890, extolled the area’s recreational

attractions and listed the places to stop. The Guide

described Haulover as a “post office . . . located on

an isthmus separating the Indian River from Mos-

quito Lagoon, about nine miles northeast of

Titusville.” Dr. James A. Henshall”s Camping and

Cruising in Florida, printed in Cincinnati in 1884,

pointed out the connecting role of the Haulover

Canal and mentioned the “celebrated Dummit’s

orange grove in that vicinity.”

156

The numbers of

tourists quickly affected the wildlife of the area.

“The managers of the steamer-lines have recently

issued strict orders forbidding any shooting from

their steamers, a wise and timely regulation, for, by

their insane shooting at everything, the tourists

were driving all birds, alligators and animals from

this portion of the river.”

157

Private enterprise moved into the Atlantic inland

waterways with the state’s charter in 1881 of the

Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Co. The

company’s stated project was to create a 5-foot-

deep, 50-foot-wide channel. The company received

over a million acres for 268 miles of canal.

158

Ye t

seldom did the company meet the conditions of the

charter, and private entrepreneurial activity delayed

Federal oversight of the waterway. Once a section of

canal was examined and accepted by the State, the

company’s maintenance was minimal.

The company attempted to improve the Haulover

passage, which was 1000’ long but only 18” deep

and 12’ wide. To accommodate dredges, work began

in 1885 with clearing done by Italian laborers

brought in by the company. After completing its

work at Oak Hill, the steam dredge Chester moved

to the Haulover. In 1886, it cleared the old canal and

then moved on to Grant’s Farm, 50 miles to the

south near Sebastian Inlet to work on the channel to

the east of that island. Complaints began almost

immediately, and only two months after completion

of the work, portions of the canal were already

becoming impassable. The steamer Clara aban-

doned its trips on the river because of the growing

sandbar. The Titusville Star stated that the company

seemed to have already forgotten about the Hau-

lover Canal and objected to the company’s receiving

the grant of land which was considered compen-

sation for the canal work.

159

Failure to maintain the

canal was a long tradition. The United States Coast

Survey had already recommended a site about a half

mile away from the old canal for a replacement, and

Old Haulover Canal was replaced in 1888 by a new

canal at Allenhurst, today’s New Haulover Canal on

the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

160

The extension of the Florida East Coast (FEC)

Railway proved to be formidable competition for

the waterway and canal company, especially for

long-distance, north-south travel. Interlocking

directorates between the railroad and the canal

company might have been as much to blame for the

difficulties in opening and maintaining canals as any

inherent characteristics of the modes of transpor-

155. George M. Barbour, Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and Settlers (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882), 160; “Rambler,” Guide

to Florida (New York: American News Co., 1873), 26.

156. James A. Henshall, Camping and Cruising in Florida (Cincinnati: R. Clarke & Co., 1884), 13-14.

157. Barbour, Tourists, Invalids and Settlers, 117.

158. Buker, Sun, Sand and Water, 116-17.

159. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 104-05.

160. Ibid. and p. 38.

FIGURE 15. View of Old Haulover Canal, 1891.

(Homer Cato Collection)

50 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

tation or the geography. FEC owner Henry Flagler

invested capital in the canal company, which was in

competition with his railroad, but he only wanted

access to the canal company’s land grants. As a

result, he had an incentive to keep the company

from failure and receivership, but he had no interest

in making the canal a success. Although the canal

company remained fiscally viable, it would not be an

important transportation alternative to Flagler’s

railroad.

161

In the 1920s, the canal company finally was thrown

into receivership. Its new owners turned a profit in

1925 during the height of the Florida land boom, but

the collapse of the boom in 1926 brought economic

collapse of the new canal company. The waterway

again fell into receivership and the canal itself fell

into disrepair yet again.

162

Florida residents in the

Atlantic Coast area, led by Charles F. Burgman of

Daytona Beach, pushed for the Federal government

to take over the operation of the waterway. In

January 1927, Congress passed the River and

Harbor Act, which placed the Atlantic Intracoastal

Waterway under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps

of Engineers. That same year the State of Florida

created the Florida Inland Navigation District to

issue bonds to acquire the right-of-way from the

canal company, in preparation for turning private

waterways over to the Federal government. In

December 1929, the Corps of Engineers actually

took possession of the waterway.

163

By 1934, the Corps had straightened and relocated

sections of the channel, some of which lies within

today’s Seashore. No longer did the route run

through Shipyard Island and past Turtle Mound and

the small community of Eldora (discussed below

and in Chapter 5), but instead ran along the western

shore of Mosquito Lagoon until the passage at New

Haulover Canal.

U. S. Life-Saving Service

Still not all vessels wanted to or could use the inland

passage, and the coast near Cape Canaveral could be

a dangerous passage, especially for sailing vessels

taking advantage of the Gulf Stream just off shore

which often ran aground during storms. Massachu-

setts established its first “huts of refuge” in 1787, but

not until 1848 did the Federal government appro-

priate funds to construct lifeboat stations, primarily

along the northeastern portion of the East Coast, to

assist shipwreck victims. However, facilities were

few, far between, and often neglected and great loss

of life was routine, especially during major storms.

Calls for reform led to the creation of the United

States Life-Saving Service in 1878. There were three

categories of stations: life-saving stations manned

periodically by full-time crews, life-boat stations sit-

uated near ports and equipped with heavy life boats,

and houses of refuge located along the Florida and

Gulf coasts.

164

Houses of Refuge differed from the first two cate-

gories in that they were erected simply to provide

shelter rather than active rescue. A Life-Saving

Service report in 1881 stated “Florida differs in its

condition from any other coast of the United States.

Vessels driven ashore come so near the beach as to

enable their crews to gain land by their own efforts.

But those who gain the shore are then in danger of

perishing by hunger and thirst, the coast being

entirely desolate with hardly an inhabitant. Houses

of Refuge are supplied with boats, provisions and

restoratives, but not manned by crews: a keeper,

however, resides in each throughout the year, who

after every storm is required to make extended

excursions along the coast, finding and succoring

any persons that may have been cast ashore.”

165

Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge, which is no

longer extant, was one of 10 such houses and life-

saving stations built between 1875 and 1886 along

Florida’s east coast below St. Augustine, with the

Mosquito lagoon facility opening in July 1886.

166

1884 Life-Saving Service manual spelled out specifi-

cations for construction of the Houses of Refuge in

Florida, including a boat house and a privy.

167

The

structures were solidly built to withstand violent

weather, an early example of hurricane-proof con-

struction. The sandy beach and Atlantic Ocean lay

only a short distance to the east while Mosquito

161. Edward N. Akin, “The Sly Foxes: Henry Flagler, George Miles and Florida’s Public Domain,” Florida Historical Quarterly 58

(July 1979).

162. The waterway route was often referred to as a canal.

163. Buker, Sun, and Water, 117-121.

164. Dr. Dennis L. Noble, “A Legacy: The United States Life-Saving Service,” United States Coast Guard Department of

Homeland Security, http://www.uscg.mil/history/h_USLSS.html, 63.

165. CANA park files, “Text, Exhibit 2, House of Refuge: Lifesaving Service Report of 1881,” 1.

166. CANA park files, “Houses of Refuge and Life-Saving Stations of Florida,” 153. The Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge

stood on the thin ribbon of barrier island where the pavement of the northern beach-side road ends at Parking Area #5.

167. CANA park files, “Specifications for House of Refuge and Boathouse on the Coast of Florida, Seventh U.S. Life-Saving

District 1884,” 1-4.

National Park Service 51

Lagoon lay approximately 100 yards to the west.

Included in the list of articles to outfit each new

House of Refuge were 15 bunks for shipwreck

victims, 6 spittoons, 4 barrels of salt beef, 4 casks of

navy bread, 4 barrels of salt pork, 50 pounds of

coffee, and 150 pounds of sugar.

168

The Keeper, who lived in the house with his family,

was responsible for maintaining a daily record of

ships sighted, as well as recording surf conditions,

wind speed, wind direction, temperature and baro-

metric pressure four times a day. He also had to note

if the house was “thoroughly clean” and in good

repair.

169

All this information was written in an

official journal (Form 1808) with a copy made and

mailed to Washington once a week.

170

Journals for

the Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge, dating back

to at least August 1893, are located at the National

Archives.

The Keeper was not required to do regular beach

patrol but was to be ready during inclement weather

to aid any shipwreck victims that came ashore. He

was trained in first aid, particularly resuscitation

from drowning.

171

Life of the keepers and their families was for the

most part lonely and uneventful, rescues notwith-

standing. The advent of steam ships, which were

easier to control than sailing ships in bad weather,

led to a reduction in shipwrecks, as did the advent of

radio communications in the early 1900s. In

addition, the extension of the Florida East Coast

Railway enabled more goods to be shipped by rail

rather than by sea, reducing coastal traffic and

making keepers’ lives even more uneventful.

172

Jacob Summerlin, member of a central Florida

pioneer family, served as the first keeper of the Mos-

quito Lagoon House of Refuge from July 1886 until

July 1890. The following July, Edwin S. Coutant

began what would be 18 years of service. Coutant’s

two daughters grew up and were courted by their

future husbands at the House of Refuge. Harold, the

youngest child, spent his entire youth at Mosquito

Lagoon. He enjoyed photography and took fasci-

nating pictures of the House of Refuge (both

interior and exterior) and his family and guests.

Large century plants (Agave americana) planted by

one of the keepers often appear in his photographs.

168. CANA park files, official correspondence from Office of Superintendents of Construction U.S. Life-Saving Stations No. 24

State Street, New York, June 1, 1886, number 2320, 1, 2, and 8.

169. CANA park files, Form 1808 Journal for Mosquito Lagoon Station, December 31, 1893, 1.

170. CANA park files, Alan W. Shaw, “Houses of Refuge,” 1-2.

171. Ibid., 2.

FIGURE 16. View of Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge, probably 1930s. (US Coast Guard

photograph, <http://www.uscg.mil/history/stations/MOSQUITO%20LAGOON.html>)

172. Residents of the Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge also served to assist stranded boaters in the Lagoon, fight fires, make

weather observations, and maintain communications in a sparsely populated area.

52 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Descendents of those plants can still be seen

growing at the site today.

173

Additional insight into life for the Keeper and his

family at the Mosquito Lagoon station was provided

by reminiscences of Mrs. Emma Midgett, wife of

Captain William Jarvis Midgett, who served at the

Mosquito Lagoon station from September 1926

until 1938. He was transferred from the Cape Hat-

teras, North Carolina, Life-Saving Station on the

Outer Banks, where his father and a number of

other relatives had long been employed by the Life-

Saving Service. Among his relatives, seven were

awarded the Gold Life Saving Medal, “the nation’s

highest award for saving lives” while three others

earned the Silver Life Saving Medal. Captain

Midgett himself received commendation for several

“outstanding deeds.”

Even his wife’s father served

in the U.S. Life Saving Service and her grandfather

was stationed at the Hatteras lighthouse.

174

During Captain Midgett’s tenure at Mosquito

Lagoon, his youngest son, William Jarvis, Jr., was

born; births at a House of Refuge were apparently

“an event rare in the Coast Guard annals.” For six

years, the four Midgett children took a boat three

miles across the lagoon to attend school in Oak Hill.

Later, the children drove seventeen miles each day

to a school in New Smyrna Beach. At home, all

family members helped out with the necessary tasks

of running a House of Refuge. The children “were

responsible for keeping the brass polished, boats

bailed, [and] flower gardens weeded.” During

leisure hours the children swam, fished and boated.

They also invented more extraordinary means of

entertainment such as racing gopher tortoises,

watching sea turtles nest, and afterwards, “take a

ride on their backs.”

175

Midgett routinely responded to distress calls from

boaters, particularly from Mosquito Lagoon. Fish-

erman in trouble “called or signaled the station for

help at all hours of the day and night.” Midgett

would take out his boat to meet them and aid in any

way he could. He was also called to provide fre-

quent assistance to people traveling the beach by

car. Many vehicles got stuck in the sand but,

“Captain Midgett was able to save many cars before

the ocean tides could claim them.” Midgett also

fought occasional fires and worked with customs

during Prohibition to apprehend rum runners

attempting to come ashore on this lonely, isolated

stretch of beach or transport their wares through

Mosquito Lagoon. In one instance, a north-bound

boat had run aground and upon offering assistance,

Midgett, “realized the boat was loaded with whiskey

[and] attempted to board and take the boat.” The

crew denied him permission to board the vessel and

began throwing bags of whiskey overboard. Midgett

collected the bags as evidence, returned to the

House of Refuge, and alerted the Custom Patrol.

Eventually, the rum runners were captured, tried,

and found guilty by Jacksonville, Florida’s Federal

Court. A photograph of Midgett standing next to

smashed liquor stills illustrates the fact that he “was

personally responsible for destroying several liquor

stills and instrumental in tipping the Custom Patrol

about other still operations.”

176

In 1915, the Life-Saving Service merged with the

Revenue Cutter Service to form the United States

Coast Guard, but the Mosquito Lagoon House of

Refuge continued to function as before. The house

was manned through World War I, and by World

War II it had become a Life Boat Station. An obser-

vation tower was constructed to look for German

submarines, which were sinking merchant marine

vessels up and down the East Coast in the early

years of the war. In 1945, the facility was decommis-

sioned and sold, but was apparently abandoned and

became a target for vandals.

177

Harold Cardwell, a

local historian, recalls that the structure burned

down between 1948-50.

178

According to a

statement by F. Russell Galbreath, Constable for

Southeast Volusia County for 34 years, the house

was accidentally ignited by a stranded motorist and

his family, who took refuge in the house and lit a

smudge fire to drive away the voracious mosquitoes.

They, like other motorists, were lured onto the deep

sand road by a man named “Fred”, who developed a

novel method of gaining revenue from tourists. He

would steal Route A1A road signs and post them

173. Sandra Henderson Thurlow, “Lonely Vigils: Houses of Refuge on Florida’s East Coast, 1876-1915,” Florida Historical

Quarterly, 76 (1997): 152, 166, 170-72. Harold Coutant was interviewed in 1960 about his life at the House of Refuge; his

tape-recorded interview and Coutant’s related photographs can be found at the Historical Society of Martin County,

Stuart, Florida.

174. CANA park files, correspondence of Mrs. Emma Midgett donated by daughter Mary Midgett Hooper February 15, 1978,

5- 6.

175. Ibid., 3-5.

176. Ibid., 2-4.

177. See U.S. Coast Guard history of the station at <http://www.uscg.mil/history/stations/MOSQUITOLAGOON.pdf>. David M.

Brewer, “An Archeological and Ethnohistorical Overview,” 85-86, stated that it was turned over to the Department of the

Interior in 1945 and became a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Station in 1959, but that seems to be mistaken.

178. Personal communication, Harold Cardwell to John Stiner, 1/16/ 2008.

National Park Service 53

south of Eldora. Unwary travelers heading down the

coast would venture down the trail and get stuck.

After letting them contend with the insects for

several hours, Fred would come along with his tow

truck and pull them out for the “exorbitant” amount

of $100. Galbreath arrested Fred several times in

unsuccessful attempts to curb this behavior.

179

Of Florida’s 10 original Houses of Refuge, only one

remains

—Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge on Hutch-

inson Island near Stuart, Florida, which is open to

the public. A scale model of the Mosquito Lagoon

House of Refuge has been constructed from blue-

prints and photographs and is on display at

Canaveral National Seashore.

Water and Rail Lines

Converge

In the years after the Civil War, steamboats and

steam-driven trains were linked as overland and

water routes became connected to create integrated

transportation systems. People and goods could

make trips combining boat and train travel. Henry

Sanford helped to pioneer this combination in

central Florida in order to move products from the

Florida interior to far-away markets. But it was

Henry Flagler and Henry Plant who escalated the

scale of the ventures. Plant and Flagler created

water-rail systems to carry people and goods from

Florida to the Caribbean, especially Cuba, as well as

link them with the rest of the nation. The state’s

rivers soon were crossed by railroad bridges and

transportation by rail in many cases replaced trans-

portation by steamboat along those rivers.

180

Historically on the periphery of main overland

transportation routes, residents in the vicinity of

today’s Seashore combined water and land travel to

reach their destinations and transport goods. Before

Henry Flagler and Henry Plant consolidated central

Florida’s many short lines, residents had to make

their own arrangements for whatever combination

of steamers and steam locomotives was needed to

transport themselves and their products. Residents

of Oak Hill, on the mainland, in 1887 expressed

their anticipation of promised improved access to

the rest of the world via connection to the Seville

and Halifax Railway or on ocean-going steamers via

New Smyrna. At the same time, the route that resi-

dents had to use from Haulover alternated between

water and overland methods. Travelers and goods

took a sailboat from Haulover to Titusville (founded

as Sand Point in 1867), then proceeded overland to

a St. Johns River landing from which they went on

by steamer to Palatka or Jacksonville. Allenhurst

boasted that it could be reached by rail from

Chicago to Jacksonville and Titusville, and by water

from Jacksonville.

181

As in other parts of the United States, Florida’s

political and business leaders encouraged the

extension of railroads. As an incentive to expand,

for every mile of track laid south of Daytona, Henry

Flagler’s railroad received 8,000 acres from public

lands.

182

The three Henrys brought improved, rapid rail

transportation to central Florida. A former dip-

lomat, Henry Sanford was the first of the three

Henrys to arrive in Florida as an entrepreneur.

Sanford was not a financial success, but his manager,

James E. Ingraham, initiated the consolidation of

many small lines within central Florida. Henry

Flagler’s wealth from his long association with

Standard Oil Company allowed him to build upon

Sanford’s incipient consolidations and to hire

Ingraham to oversee the process that Ingraham had

started for Sanford. Henry Plant was the third

railroad Henry. Plant focused his efforts on

Florida’s west coast. Flagler combined railway lines

and hotels and moved ever southward along

Florida’s Atlantic Coast. Flagler’s Florida East Coast

Railway reached as far as Daytona Beach in 1883.

After pausing to build the lavish Ponce de Leon

Hotel in St. Augustine, which opened in 1888,

Flagler brought the rail line to New Smyrna in

November 1892 and was serving the area of the Sea-

shore by the following year. In 1886, Florida’s

railroads had begun converting to standard gauge

track in conformity with much of the nation,

allowing cars to move readily from one railroad line

to another.

183

By 1894, the Florida East Coast

Railroad stretched all the way to Palm Beach. In the

process, Indian River towns acquired good rail

access for goods to go to distant markets and to

179. CANA park files, statement by F. Russell Galbreath concerning destruction of House of Refuge, undated, but probably

around 1980.

180. Tebeau, History of Florida, 283-87.

181. Wanton S. Webb, ed. Webb’s Historical, Industrial and Biographical Florida, Part I (New York: W. S. Webb & Co., 1885), 84,

109-110; Shofner, History of Brevard County, 248.

182. Tebeau, History of Florida, 284.

183. George W. Pettingill, Jr., The Story of the Florida Railroads, Bulletin No. 86 (Boston: Railway and Locomotive Historical

Society, 1952), 46.

54 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

bring visitors from distant locations. The Titusville

newspaper reported that the new railroad had

increased travel so much that hotels and boarding

houses along the river had accommodations for

only 70 percent of the travelers. The presence of the

north-south rail line a mile west of the Seashore was

a boon, but still no rail line reached across the water

to the barrier islands.

184

For the little community of

Eldora, isolated on the east side of Mosquito

Lagoon, it meant decline. Rail travel was cheaper

and faster and so took precedence over river

voyages. As a result, water traffic passing Eldora

dwindled year after year.

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, rail-

roads carried many of the men and war supplies to

Florida ports for transfer to ships headed for the

battleground of Cuba. The U.S. government

financed improvements to Florida’s harbors and rail

systems to serve the war effort. The railroads

retained the improvements at the war’s end and

were one of the major beneficiaries of the 1898 con-

flict, with significant additions to their facilities paid

for largely by the War Department.

185

Automobiles and Highways

The advent of the inexpensive private automobile in

the twentieth century revolutionized society in

almost all areas. Local, state, and Federal agencies

responded throughout the twentieth century to

ever-increasing use of personal motor vehicles.

Highways became wider and were paved to allow

more and faster traffic.

At first, cyclists organized to advocate good roads,

even before the introduction of the automobile, and

“good roads” associations were formed throughout

the nation. In 1915, the Florida State Road

Department was created, and Federal legislation

over the next several years made funds available to

help states construct roads and bridges. Between

1923 and 1929, Florida entered its greatest road-

building era to date. Route U.S.1 brought motorists

into the state from the northeast and became the

main highway bringing motorists near to Seashore

lands. For 40 years during the golden age of

motoring, U.S. 1 served as the East Coast’s premier

highway. In addition, the Dixie Highway provided a

continuous route between Florida and the Midwest

and in Florida often occupied the same roadbed as

U.S. 1. For example, from New Smyrna to Titusville,

U.S. 1, the Dixie Highway, and the Atlantic Coast

Highway used the same roadbed.

186

The Dixie Highway was one of several routes desig-

nated to improve point-to-point, personal-vehicle

travel in the United States in the first quarter of the

twentieth century. The advocacy for good roads by

the League of American Wheelmen (bicyclists) had

evolved into a Progressive-era campaign to improve

roads in order to enhance the lives of rural

dwellers.

187

The Good Roads Movement started

out with the idea that hard-surfaced roads would

help farmers get their produce to markets and at the

same time enable the more isolated rural folk to

travel to urban areas. This would relieve what were

184. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 1: 113.

FIGURE 17. Brochure announcing completion of

Florida East Coast Railway. (Reprinted from

original by Conch Tour Train, Key West, FL)

185. Tebeau, History of Florida, 325-26.

186. Official Automobile Blue Book, Highway Map of Florida, (Chicago and New York: Automobile Blue Book Inc., 1925), copy

at St. Augustine Historical Society.

187. Howard Lawrence Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie: Accessibility and Modernization in the South, 1885-1935, (Knoxville:

University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 12-15.

National Park Service 55

then believed to be negative aspects of isolation;

country folk could avail themselves of the improve-

ments to their lives which cities offered.

But farmers in the South did not become the advo-

cates of “good roads” as envisioned. While they

could see the benefits, the basic conservatism of the

farmers did not agree with the idea of financing

roads through indebtedness by local governments.

It was businessmen instead who became the cham-

pions of improved roads and of route designations

as conduits of traffic that would fuel economic

development. Promoters also thought that good

roads would increase leisure travel. Communities

wanted to be beneficiaries of this predicted tourism

bonanza.

An interstate north-south highway was proposed

and initially dubbed the “Cotton Belt Route.” But at

an organizational meeting in Chattanooga in April

1915, the name became “Dixie Highway” and a

struggle among hundreds of communities to be on

the route ensued.

188

When the route was announced in 1916, “pro-

moters then claimed that the route linked two of the

most remote and culturally different places in the

country: Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, and Miami

Beach, Florida.”

189

The Dixie Highway had evolved

from an envisioned single north-south route into a

complicated network with several legs, passing

through 10 states. Members of the Dixie Road Asso-

ciation suggested that the existence of a good road

would increase an area’s likelihood of being selected

as part of the route. Thus the Dixie Highway

attempted to incorporate existing viable roadways

rather than attempt to improve or create roads after

designating a route. The Dixie Highway Association

published a promotional magazine, Dixie Highway,

and marked the route with red and white sign

bearing the letters “DH.”

In Florida, many roads were initially surfaced or

even maintained by paving with shell from the once-

numerous prehistoric shell mounds that had literally

blanketed portions of the east coast north of

Canaveral.

190

Few of the shell mounds remain

today. County deed records contain the agreements

by property owners selling rights to “mine” the shell

on their land. The existence of the house atop

Snyder Mound (Seminole Rest) protected that

midden from the mining. Marion Porta Snyder,

whose grandfather Wesley Snyder owned Seminole

Rest, recalled that “When they were building the

roads or railroads – they wanted to buy the shell.

Granddaddy said he wouldn’t sell. He said it would

spoil the beauty of the property; that’s why we have

the elevation here.”

191

Nels Nelson of the American Museum of Natural

History examined a large mound located in Oak Hill

being lost to mining in 1917, a quarter mile south of

Seminole Rest. When he arrived only one-seventh

of the original mound remained. Two steam shovels

had been at work for four months filling nearly

2,000 railroad cars with shell destined for road

paving. Even Turtle Mound and Castle Windy

Mound on the barrier island part of the Seashore

were partly destroyed for road fill.

D. W. Bailey’s 1924 description of driving down the

east coast illustrates the widespread relocation of

the shell. “From [New Smyrna] to Oak Hill there is a

fair shell road, the fifteen miles of which can be

negotiated with no trouble.” Three miles south of

Oak Hill, one could again continue by “country

shell road.” And so these “fair shell roads” alter-

nated with sections of other paving material or

sections along the coast road that were merely

graded.

192

The community of New Smyrna touted

the roads to attract outsiders, stating in a 1905 bro-

chure that “no town in the state can boast of better

kept streets and pavements, while New Smyrna has

188. Preston, Dirt Roads to Dixie, 53-55.

189. Ibid., 58.

190. Jerald Milanich, Florida’s Indians from Ancient Times to the Present (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998).

191. Interview of Mrs. Jacqueline Snyder Stevens and Mrs. Marian Porta, August 27, 1992, by National Park Service personnel,

typescript transcription at Seashore office.

192. Brewer, “Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Overview,” 91-92; letter from D. W. Bailey of Vero Beach to Frank J. Parker

of Hastings, August 18, 1924, published in The St. Augustine Evening Record, August 21, 1924.

FIGURE 18. “Meeting Friends Along the Dixie

Highway,” 1920s. (Florida Photographic

Collection, at <http://fpc.dos.state.fl.us/

reference/rc12876.jpg>.

56 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

more mileage of shell road driveways than any other

city on the Florida East Coast. This record is the

pride of its populace.”

193

After World War II, tourism interests wanted to limit

the confusion over Florida’s east coast auto route,

which often skirted the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean-

side route incorporated several roads, both Federal

and state, and several “highways” often used a single

roadbed. In November 1946, the State Road Board

decided on the name “A1A.”

194

In 1948, State Representative Roy Roberts

announced that a survey was underway for Road

A1A that was planned to run along the Seashore’s

barrier island. The combination of the proposed

roadbed to extend A1A, a proposed deep water

harbor at Cape Canaveral and the new state park at

DeSoto Beach spurred some beach-front property

owners to clear their land in 1948 in preparation for

development. Although the highway had not materi-

alized by 1957, the population boom generated by

the U.S. space program at Cape Canaveral

encouraged the New York-Florida Realty Company

of Fort Lauderdale to purchase a tract with eight

miles of ocean frontage north from Playalinda

Beach, at the south end of the Seashore. These and

other nearby purchases brought new speculation

about a highway along the ocean beach to connect

Playalinda with New Smyrna Beach, just north of

the Seashore. In a special election in 1959, voters

approved the creation of a special road district

authorized to issue bonds for the proposed road.

Approval was acquired, although only five votes

were cast, throwing some doubt on the viability of a

road-funding proposal that aroused such feeble

voter response. But it soon became moot with the

expansion of the military reservation to accom-

modate the space program. Because of the need for

a safety perimeter around the space program site,

the proposed ocean-side road from Cape Canaveral

to New Smyrna would not be built, fortuitously pro-

tecting the area from development.

195

Fitting in with the name “confusion” that the State

Road Board sought to alleviate were the road desig-

nations within the Seashore boundary. Based on the

U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USGS) quad-

rangle (quad) maps created around 1950, A1A

hugged the dunes and led visitors to Turtle Mound

and Moeller’s Camp at the edge of the east bank of

Mosquito Lagoon immediately south of the mound.

According to the quad maps, the pavement ended

about 6 miles south of Turtle Mound, just north of

George’s Slough. The maps indicated that a path ran

from that point, not even of sufficient maintenance

to be considered an “unimproved road.” Ann

Towner’s 1979 “History of Eldora and the Sur-

rounding Area” states that A1A was not paved until

1956, that “the basic shell road was put in from

Eldora to the House of Refuge during World War

II.” Seashore staff reported that the road was not

paved past the Visitor Center until NPS put down

soil cement to the last parking area and the Eldora

loop in 1984.

196

Thus for motorists in the middle of the twentieth

century, A1A effectively dead-ended south of the

old shell mound; road maps of the middle of the

twentieth century certainly showed it as a “road to

nowhere.”

197

Locals made money pulling stuck

tourists out of the sand at the end of the road. Prior

to the Seashore’s creation, adventurous locals

would drive north or south on the “sand road”

behind the dune (along Klondike Beach) and on the

beach itself in stripped down cars called “skeeters.”

It could be hazardous as evidenced by the remains

193. Robert H. Weeks, New Smyrna, Volusia County “The Land of Flowers” (History Facsimile Series East Florida, 1905) page 1

194. “Tourists’ Confusion Created Unique Label,” Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), February 1, 1986.

FIGURE 19. View of shell mound being destroyed

for road-building materials at an unidentified

location on the east coast of Florida in 1912.

(Florida Memory Collection)

195. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2: 92, 96,148-49.

196. Personal communication, Richard Ferry, North District Maintenance Supervisor to John Stiner, 2000.

197. Discrepancies in dates or existence of paving might arise from differing meanings for terms. Maps made in the first half

of the twentieth century often considered any hard surfaced road (for example, “shell roads”) as paved.

National Park Service 57

of stranded skeeters that periodically become

exposed with the shifting sands.

Although disconnected from the barrier island

roadway, A1A reappears on the quad maps as part of

State Road 3, to the west across Mosquito Lagoon,

about a mile north of New Haulover Canal and con-

tinues until it intersects with State Road 402, then

soon leaves the SR 402 roadbed heading south. State

Road 402 led from Titusville to Playalinda Beach.

From the terminus of State Road 402 at the Atlantic

Ocean an unimproved road stretched north, this

also becoming a mere path south of Klondike Beach

in the middle of today’s Seashore.

198

The middle 12

miles (Klondike Beach) of the Seashore’s 24 miles of

barrier island has been kept inaccessible by design

and is only reached by foot, trail bike, or horseback.

This is one of the very few stretches of beach

remaining where a visitor can get some sense of

what the state’s coast looked like before Europeans

arrived.

199

Tourist camps and fish camps nestled along A1A on

the west shore of the lagoon south of Oak Hill on

the strip of land between Indian River and Mos-

quito Lagoon. Shiloh Camp was a mile or so south

of the community of Shiloh. Another mile south of

there was Beacon Camp. South of Old Haulover

Canal were the structures of Ragin Fish Camp. Mos-

quito Lagoon was known for its schools of drum,

flounder, Gulf fish, ladyfish, cavalle, besouga,

croaker, channel bass (redfish), mullet, pigfish,

sheepshead, sailor’s choice, sea trout, spotted trout

(weakfish), triple tail, and whiting.

200

Contemporary road maps issued by and usually

offered free by oil companies indicated the same sit-

uation for A1A as did the USGS maps. Many other

road maps of the period show only some of the

roads that were actually in existence. Frequently,

secondary and lower-level roads did not appear on

commercial road maps of the 1920s, 1930s, and

1940s. This lack of completeness was under-

standable because the early road maps were usually

generated by firms who solicited and then featured

paying subscribers or advertisers rather than being

produced by state or county government agencies,

which might be more interested in completeness.

Even when government agencies published the road

maps, the locations of roads away from municipal-

ities and into rural areas were often depicted with

inconsistency or imprecision.

Another transportation-related feature within the

Seashore was the “landing field” that is shown on

the Mims 1949 Quad map. It was located on the east

side of A1A (State Road 3) just north of Allenhurst

and New Haulover Canal.

Ultimately the requirements of national security and

the protection for aeronautical research after World

War II brought about Federal-level control and

restricted access to the roads in the Seashore. In

June 1956, Congress passed the Interstate and

Defense Highway System Act. The law provided for

$32 billion over a 13-year period to construct a

41,000-mile interstate highway system, featuring

limited-access, high-speed expressways. This legis-

lation recognized that trucks had become the

preferred method of freight shipment and automo-

biles the most desired means of travel. The

Interstate System would allow military vehicles to

avoid delays caused by traffic congestion in

towns.

201

The Interstate System dramatically enhanced

mobility in Florida. Interstate 95 on the east coast

linked Miami and south Florida directly to the

northeastern states. These highways boosted

tourism to lofty new levels and opened many areas

of the state to business and residential development.

Conversely, communities that had thrived along the

older main highways lost business as motorists

flocked to the faster routes. U.S. 1 became a route

between local communities with local traffic, and

automobile service businesses, hostelries, and

eating establishments along its route faced dimin-

ished business.

More than improved highway travel was instru-

mental in the surge in tourism in Florida. The spread

of air-conditioning in the 1960s made tourism a

year-round industry instead of a December-to-June

business. Air-conditioning also made life more com-

fortable for year-round residence. “Florida’s

fantastic trajectory of population growth in the

decades after 1950 would almost certainly have flat-

198. UCGS Quadrangle maps: Mims 1949, Oak Hill 1949, Wilson 1949, Aerial 1950, Pardon Island, 1952. These are the earliest

“quad” maps of this area. Quad maps for most of Florida lying south of Gainesville were not produced until 1949 or a

few years thereafter. Quad maps for the more northerly part of Florida were generated regularly, beginning around

1917.

199. National Park Service, General Management Plan, Canaveral National Seashore (Denver: National Park Service Denver

Service Center, 1981).

200. USCG maps: Wilson Quad 1949, Oak Hill Quad 1949; William H. Greeg and Capt. John Gardner, Where, When and How to

Catch Fish on the East Coast of Florida (Buffalo and New York: Matthews-Northrup Works, 1909), 188-89.

201. Bernhard, et al., Firsthand America, 856.

58 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

tened out without the introduction and widespread

adoption of air-conditioning.”

202

Associated Properties

The associated properties for the Effects of Trans-

portation Networks, 1820 to 1950, context are the

two canals which join Indian River and Mosquito

Lagoon and the Confederate Salt Works.

Old Haulover Canal

The old portage that preceded the Old Haulover

Canal is described in Chapter Three because of its

inferred association with the British and Second

Spanish colonial periods. The canal is also asso-

ciated with the American period of Florida from

1821 to 1888, when it was replaced by the New Hau-

lover Canal. Old Haulover received increased

attention during wartimes. It served as a conduit for

men and materiel during the Second Seminole War

and was maintained to abet anticipated needs of

small boats in the Third Seminole War. Old Haul-

over Canal also provided a passage for Civil War-era

vessels sailing for the Union and the Confederacy

and for personal vessels.

The remains of the canal run for about 2,000 feet

between Mosquito Lagoon on the east and the

Indian River on the west. The canal is bisected by

State Road 3, with the eastern side in the jointly

managed portion of the Seashore and the west side

located in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

The eastern portion was apparently dredged in his-

toric times; it is still connected to Mosquito Lagoon

and contains water. It is approximately 30 feet wide

and of unknown depth. In 2004, the Refuge cleared

vegetation both north and south of the canal to

restore native habitat. Isolated trees and scrubby

vegetation grow along the banks, with a thicker

stand of trees located along the north bank near

Mosquito Lagoon. The section of canal west of State

Road 3 is surrounded by mature hammock vege-

tation, which conceals it from the road. It is

completely dry and is approximately 6 to 8 feet deep

and 30 feet wide. It is on the western side that one

experiences the feeling of discovering a hidden,

untouched piece of Florida history. While some of

the walls have fallen in, portions of the bank, partic-

ularly along the north side, retain their shape, with

the underlying coquina rock clearly visible. In 2006,

a State historical marker was erected at the New

Haulover Canal to commemorate the Old Haulover

Portage and Canal and their importance to the early

development of the area.

New Haulover Canal

The present Haulover Canal is located near the

Brevard-Volusia County line on Kennedy Parkway

and on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. New

Haulover Canal permits water traffic to cross

between Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River.

The initial dredging and formation of this cut was

made in 1888. The canal is maintained by the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers with a perpetual easement

for that purpose from the Florida Inland Naviga-

tional District. A bridge on State Road 3 crosses

New Haulover Canal.

Confederate Salt Works

The purported Confederate Salt Works is located

inland from the Intracoastal Waterway on the west

side of Mosquito Lagoon within Ross Hammock, on

the extreme northwestern end of the prehistoric

burial mound. The main walls are oriented north-

south and east-west. Basic construction is coquina

cemented with lime mortar made by burning shells.

The remaining tops of the walls are 12 inches above

the level of the hearth. The hearth is 6 inches higher

than the surrounding floor. This floor extended

some 8 feet in front and 15 feet south of the hearth.

There is some debate about the actual identity of

these ruins. (See Chapter Three.)

National Register Eligibility

Because Old Haulover Canal is already listed on

the National Register, the determinations made here

form the basis for a review and, if necessary, revi-

sions of the site’s listing. Overgrowth along the canal

obscures it. To restore its historic appearance, areas

on either side of the canal would need to be cleared

and opened to accommodate foot traffic as would

have been necessary when it was in use.

New Haulover Canal continues to serve the function

for which it was created more than 110 years ago,

linking Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon. New

Haulover Canal continues to serve as a vital link in

connecting the natural coastal waterways of Florida

and connecting to the rest of the Atlantic Intra-

coastal Waterway. New Haulover Canal can claim

local, state and national significance under Criterion

A of the National Register of Historic Places for its

association with events that have made a significant

contribution to the broad patterns of our history in

the areas of commerce, engineering, transportation

202. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 429-35, quote on 435.

National Park Service 59

and maritime history. It also qualifies under Cri-

terion C for its embodiment of distinctive

characteristics of a type, period, or method of con-

struction: dredging for canal construction, canal

construction and maintenance and for environ-

mental alterations created by the former two.

However, since the new canal is under the juris-

diction of the Army Corps of Engineers, CANA will

defer nomination to that agency.

Because the Confederate Salt Works was listed on the

National Register in 1981, the determinations made

here form the basis for a review and, if necessary,

revisions of the site’s listing. Local lore and legend

form the evidence for the use of the site as a salt

works. Conclusive documentary evidence to

support the association of the remains at the site

with salt production during the Civil War has not

been found. Local histories attribute the destruction

of the salt works to a party of men from the Union

boats Henry Andréw and Penguin, but that assertion

is weakened because the Union Navy correspon-

dence written immediately after this Union sortie

and purported destruction did not mention the dis-

abling of a salt works as an accomplishment of a

mission otherwise gone awry and which needed

some accomplishment to commend itself. Archeo-

logical investigations associated with the

investigations of Ross Hammock’s prehistoric

resource revealed a hearth-like structure that could

have served as a homemade salt works, but the

absence of detailed field notes from the excavations

leaves an evidential void. Although the site is already

on the Register, the association with the historic

events cited in the nomination is questionable. As

stated in Chapter Three, the purported Confederate

Salt Works may be the chimney associated with the

Gomez/Gay House, which was built prior to 1803,

or even an earlier structure associated with the

British-period Elliott Plantation.

60 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

National Park Service 61

Chapter Five: Population Growth

After Wars, 1845 to 1950

American wars have repeatedly brought population

growth to Florida. Many of the military troops who

came to Florida were impressed with the pen-

insula’s advantages and either stayed or quickly

returned after the conflicts. Wars also created news

and publicity about Florida, which attracted new

residents who had never been to Florida. The years

following the Seminole and Civil Wars brought resi-

dents with agricultural pursuits in mind. Military

activity during the Second World War and the Cold

War were key to population growth in the area of

the Seashore.

The Second Seminole War (1835-1842) opened

new lands to white settlers as the great majority of

the Seminoles were removed from their Florida

homes to lands in the west. After the American Civil

War (1861-1865), while many Americans headed to

the lands west of the Mississippi River, new resi-

dents from the North and the Midwest arrived as

well in Florida, seeking inexpensive land and eco-

nomic opportunities. Also, some former

Confederates relocated to central Florida to escape

Reconstruction regimes and restrictions, which

were more onerous in the more populated areas of

the former Confederacy.

203

World War II introduced Florida to soldiers from all

over the United States. The year-round warm

weather made Florida an ideal training area for

enlistees, and the War Department built many

installations in Florida and other southern states.

Many veterans chose to make a permanent home in

areas where they had first stayed in military bar-

racks. After the war, the Cape Canaveral area and

central Florida became the centerpiece of the

United States’ effort for space exploration. The

Canaveral area became a leading example of the

efforts the nation made during the Cold War to

maintain technological and military supremacy over

the Soviet bloc. The expansion of military/aero-

space installations and the previously mentioned

widespread adoption of air conditioning were

probably the two biggest factors in Florida’s growth

and development after 1941.

Live Oak Harvesting

When Florida became an American territory, the

stands of live-oak forests in the new territory,

including those in today’s Seashore lands, quickly

attracted timber buyers. From colonial times,

timber from live oak trees (Quercus virginiana) was

in heavy demand for shipbuilding. Shipwrights were

attracted to live oak’s naturally curved branches and

the wood’s great tensile strength and resistance to

rot—qualities that provided the ultimate combi-

nation for shipbuilding.

204

From 1776, the U.S.

Navy had been acquiring live oak from areas within

the United States. With the acquisition of Florida

from Spain, the Navy gained access to a new source

of the sought-after timber.

In March 1822, six months after the cession of

Florida, U.S. Marshall James G. Forbes wrote to

Acting Gov. W. G. D. Worthington that the Navy’s

timber contractors were cutting along the St. Johns

and “Musquito” rivers “wherever they find it most

convenient.” In May 1822 Capt. John Elton on the

U.S. Brig Spark off the Florida coast wrote to the

Secretary of the Navy that he intended to proceed

to the Mosquito River, where “three or four

schooners [were] loaded with live oak, cut for the

U.S.” by agents who bought wood from property

owners or from those who claimed to own lands

granted during Spanish rule.

205

203. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 257.

204. Virginia Steele Wood, Live Oaking: Southern Timber for Tall Ships (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 4.

205. Carter, ed. Territorial Papers, 22: 376, 430.

62 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Maintaining an adequate timber supply for building

ships concerned the U.S. Navy. Already in 1826, a

U.S. government agent reported that all live oak near

the mouth of the St. Johns River had been removed.

In 1833, a Federal act (4 STAT.646-647) required all

custom collectors in the Territory of Florida to

ascertain whether live oak timber cut in and

departing Florida territory had been cut on private

lands or upon public lands with the consent of the

Navy Department. A Federal “Live Oak Commis-

sioner” was appointed in August 1843. Hezekiah

Thistle, “Agent for preservation of Live Oak and

other timber upon Public Land in East Florida,”

remarked upon the major perpetrators, Messrs.

Palmer and Ferris. Their “oak laying upon the

waters of ‘Mosquito’ and also that laying in the

swamps” equaled 20- to 30,000 cubic feet. Thistle

stated that probably over half had been cut from

public land and he requested that a revenue cutter

visit Mosquito Inlet and vicinity twice monthly.

206

Additionally, the Navy soon became concerned over

sales and shipments of the timber cut in U.S. lands

to foreign ship builders.

207

Loggers often poached timber on public lands,

while claiming to have taken the wood from pri-

vately claimed property. Thus, documentation of

the timber-cutting activity often did not refer to spe-

cific sites or the sites, and activities were frequently

described in after-the-fact suspicions.

The Swifts, shipbuilders in Massachusetts, came to

Florida to harvest live oak as the forests became

depleted in Georgia and South Carolina. Elijah Swift

built the first shipyard and wharves in Falmouth,

Massachusetts (on the site of the present Woods

Hole Oceanographic Institute). In 1828, the Swifts

launched their first whale ship made of live oak

timber from that yard. According to family corre-

spondence, the Swifts purchased several thousand

acres between St. Augustine and Cape Canaveral.

According to local Florida historian Ianthe Bond

Hebel, the community of Oak Hill originally was

known as Live Oak Hill, and Shipyard Island, near

Turtle Mound, apparently got its name from the pre-

liminary shaping of timbers that took place there

prior to export of the timber to the North.

208

Liveoaking brought humans into the area tempo-

rarily. According to Hebel, as many as 500 men came

south each fall to work in the Swifts’ liveoaking

camps and returned north in the spring. After the

Seminole Wars ended, the camps became more or

less permanent settlements. Hebel also claimed that

old Florida residents recalled seeing remnants of a

Swift-built dock and sunken barges, but these sites

were north of the Seashore.

209

Acquisition of land or confirmation of ownership of

land was of primary importance to officials, resi-

dents, and settlers. The Armed Occupation Act of

1842 was enacted to reward those who fought

against the Seminoles. The act aimed also to

establish settlements that might serve to hold the

line of white occupation. Officials doubted that

some applicants for land under the 1842 act held

sincere motives to settle. They suggested that some

claimants were interested only in cutting or selling

the live oak on their claims, not in establishing an

actual settlement.

While new settlers made their claims on newly

occupied land, claimants to lands received during

Florida’s colonial regimes were also filing claims.

Officials requested that surveys be made along the

25 miles of estuaries from Spruce Creek (in present-

day Volusia County) south to establish which were

public and which were private lands. Thistle fretted

that the “choice timber on the Hillsborough river

and Indian river” could not be reserved for Navy

use until the land was surveyed.

210

Elijah Swift “of the County of Barnstable of the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts” ultimately

bought land on the west bank of Indian River

opposite the Haulover in 1850, after surveys had

been completed and ownership of the land con-

firmed. The lands that Swift purchased were 4,000

acres in the Domingo Acosta Grant “in the neigh-

borhood of Flounder Creek” (outside of the

Seashore boundary) and 200 acres of lands that

were part of an award to William Garvin as an 1817

service grant to reward military service during the

Spanish era. The Swift deed was found in the public

records of St. Johns County.

211

Swift’s 1850 trans-

action was recorded in 1858 (during the Third

206. Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 26: 713-14, 794-95.

207. Ibid., 22:370, 375-76, 430-31.

208.

Wood, Live Oaking, 76-78, 167 n., 16-18. “The Swifts and the Life Oak Trade: A Little Known Chapter in Florida’s History,”

by Ianthe Bond Hebel (Daytona Beach, Fla.: typescript, 1950) contains interesting information on the Swifts’ activities.

The report (a copy of which can be found in the Seashore’s files) is not footnoted and the source of much of Ms. Bond’s

information is unclear.

209. Wood, Live Oaking, 78.

210. Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 26: 692.

211. Deed Book H, 141.

National Park Service 63

Seminole War), which suggests that Swift chose to

safeguard his registration of this transaction at a

county seat that was safe from potential destruction

from upheavals between whites and Seminoles.

Existing land records for Volusia County (the

location of the majority of Seashore land) mostly

date from 1866 with occasional legal instruments

prior to that date. It is possible that the Swift private

papers in Massachusetts might yield additional

information on specific claims or purchases in the

Seashore that are not in the public records in

Florida.

The potential for profit from live oaking at the head

of the Indian River was yet another reason set forth

to justify the Federal government’s improving and

enlarging the Haulover. Hezekiah Thistle suggested

that a wider, deeper passage—20 to 22 feet wide and

5 feet deep—would shorten the voyage for the

timber, enable more of the journey to take place

along calm estuaries, and raise the value of the

land.

212

The historic impact of live oaking in the Seashore

was the altering of the environment by eliminating

stands of trees. But timbering is an extractive

activity, somewhat like mining, and while it may well

alter an area, it rarely results in lasting development

of an area. However, lands cleared by loggers might

have made those lands more attractive to longer-

term agricultural settlement. Already cleared lands

allowed farmers and growers to make use more

quickly of the land for market crops.

Citrus

Florida’s climate has long been a magnet for in-

migration. Florida offers a long-growing season;

crops that cannot be grown in many parts of the

United States thrive in sub-tropical Florida. Citrus is

one of those crops closely associated with Florida.

Sixteenth-century Spanish settlers introduced citrus

to the peninsula and seem to have taught Indians

how to cultivate it. The Spanish planted mostly sour

orange (Citrus aurantium), also known as Seville

orange. Naturalists Bartram and Michaux and

colonial-era settlers in the Seashore area mentioned

citrus trees (see Chapter Four). Groves of citrus

trees remained when the last colonial regime finally

departed Florida in 1821.

The U.S. acquisition of Florida (1821) brought an

extension of citrus groves, especially along the St.

Johns River and its tributaries, with the river pro-

viding an initial transportation route to northern

markets. The Seashore area offered similar water-

borne routes for citrus transportation. As part of the

United States, Florida growers could ship fruit to

markets in areas to the north as domestic trade

rather than as foreign foods as had been the case

during Florida’s Spanish years. The growth of

coastal steam transport and travel, which followed

Florida’s cession to the United States during the ter-

ritorial period, offered improved carriers.

Sweet oranges were much more valuable than sour

oranges, which were used only in marmalade and

other confections with added sugar. The rootstock

of the sour trees, however, was more cold-hardy.

Because all varieties of orange are easily interbred,

the grafting (budding) of sweet oranges onto sour

rootstock provided the best and most lucrative

combination.

Historians of the citrus industry consider the

Dummett Grove site at the Haulover in the Seashore

as the location of the first such grafting in central

Florida. E. H. Hart reported in 1877 (decades after

the fact) that the first budding of sweet oranges on

sour orange stock had taken place in 1830 in

Dummett’s Grove.

213

Zephaniah Kingsley had

imported budded orange trees from Spain in 1824,

which were subsequently planted at the Mays Grove

at Orange Mills, a few miles north of Palatka on the

St. Johns River. Buds from the Mays Grove supplied

the Dummett Grove.

214

Other lore claims that

Douglas Dummett made use of an old grove, which

remained from trees planted about 1770 by British-

era colonizer Andréw Turnbull in conjunction with

Turnbull’s ill-fated New Smyrna indigo enterprise.

Still others claim that the orange trees were relicts of

the first Spanish period. In 1964, Douglas Dummett

was posthumously inducted into the Citrus Hall of

Fame and recognized as “the father of Central

Florida Citrus.”

215

Born in the West Indies in 1806, Douglas Dummett

came with the rest of his family when his father,

Colonel Thomas Dummett, arrived to become a

planter on the Tomoka River, about 8 miles north of

Ormond Beach. Dummett family lore holds that

Douglas Dummett sold his first crop of oranges,

consisting of 500 barrels, in 1828. With Douglas

Dummett’s marriage to the widowed Frances

212. Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 26: 697.

213. The spelling appears as both “Dummett” and “Dummitt” in many sources over many years.

214. Larry Jackson, Citrus Growing in Florida (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991), 5, 6, 64.

215. Titusville Star-Advocate, March 24, 1965.

64 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Sanchez Hunter in 1837, Douglas married into one

of the oldest and most influential families in Florida.

Frances’s ancestors had been colonists in Spanish

Florida at least as early as the 1600s. During the

Second Seminole War, Douglas Dummett gained

fame as an officer in the Mosquito Roarers, a militia

unit made up of Mosquito County residents. The

best known of the battles of the militia unit was their

defeat at the hands of the Seminoles at Dunlawton

Plantation in January 1836. Then, during the

summer of 1836, Captain Dummett and a company

of mounted volunteers made intermittent forays

against the Seminoles south of St. Augustine. But

they succeeded only in harassing the enemy.

Douglas Dummett later served as a justice of the

peace in Mosquito County and as collector of

customs at New Smyrna. He died on March 27,

1873.

216

During the second half of the decade of the 1830s,

residents of Florida’s east coast suffered prolonged

and sequential personal and financial disruptions

and setbacks. February 1835 brought a deadly

freeze, with the temperature of 7 degrees Far en he it

reported at St. Augustine. The citrus trees them-

selves froze, not just the fruit. It is reported that

Dummett’s budded grove, however, survived the

1835 freeze, probably because of the moderating

effect of the location between two bodies of water–

Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River. Generally,

the surviving, but weakened, trees or newly re-

planted groves subsequently became infected with

an insect pest known as long scale. Introduction of

long scale in 1838 and its subsequent spread to all

citrus groves in the state caused a serious decline in

citrus growing between 1840 and 1870, after which

the pest ceased to be a serious problem.

The beginning of the Second Seminole War at

Christmas 1835 brought destruction to the agricul-

tural enterprises south of St. Augustine. Residents of

the farms, groves, and plantations fled to safety from

raiding and fighting. Many of them went to St.

Augustine. Beyond the local financial disasters

brought about by wartime destruction, inability to

work the land and frozen fruit groves, the national

economy was enduring a depression. One of the

“severest depressions in American history”

occurred from 1839 through 1843, contempora-

neous with the Second Seminole War in Florida.

217

Later, the 1870s brought a big expansion of citrus

production as growers realized the size of the

potential market and possibility of satisfying it with

Florida fruit and the coincidental disappearance of

long scale. As discussed in Chapter Four, the devel-

opment of three major rail systems out of many

short lines provided more efficient transportation

for the crop than the earlier water routes. More

recently, beginning in the 1930s, the availability of

good roads has enabled transportation by truck to

open new markets and reduce hauling costs.

218

Indian River citrus enjoys a special reputation. An

1890’s account in Blackwood’s Edinburg Magazine

eloquently stated, “The Indian River orange is not to

be mentioned in the same breath with ordinary

oranges. It is a delicacy by itself, hitherto unknown

in the world, and which Spain never attempts to

rival.” Cities along the Indian River capitalized on

its fame during the 1920s when “the term Indian

River had taken such a ring of unquestioned quality

that cities 75 miles inland apparently decided they

were seaports and the words Indian River appeared

on orange crates going out of all parts of Florida.”

To curb such abuse, in 1941, an official Indian River

Citrus Area was defined by Florida state law, which

specifies that the name may be used only for fruit

grown on land adjacent to the Indian River and

lying totally within the area described by law, along

the east coast within Brevard, Indian River, St.

Lucie, Martin, Volusia, and Palm Beach Counties.

Fruit grown in this area, especially grapefruit, has a

recognized superiority on the market, as evidenced

by demand and prices. Indian River fruit is accorded

separate regulations. Fruit grown in all other sec-

tions of the state is designated as “interior fruit” for

marketing purposes.

219

Reminders of the presence of citrus pioneer

Dummett and his family are the chimney and well in

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. A visitor in

1869 noted a main house with a massive coquina

rock fireplace at one end. Nearby was a well, and a

smaller house, where Dummett’s daughters lived.

Griffin and Miller documented the chimney and

well at the Dummett Homestead (8Br78) in 1978.

The homestead is outside of the Seashore’s

boundary, being on the west side of Highway 3, but

is within the shared Seashore/Refuge boundary.

David Brewer observed “that as an historical

216. Alice Strickland, “The Dummett Family Saga,” Journal of the Halifax Historical Society (Daytona Beach) 2 (1953?):1-11;

Ianthe Bond Hebel, “The Dummetts of Northeast Florida,” typescript (1968), copy in Dummett File, St. Augustine

Historical Society. Michael G. Schene, Hopes, Dreams and Promises: History of Volusia County (Daytona Beach: New-

Journal Corp.,1976), 42-45. After the war, Frances filed for divorce from Douglas Dummett in 1844.

217. Bernhard et al., Firsthand America, 282-84, quote on p. 283.

218. Jackson, Citrus Growing in Florida, 6.

219. John McPhee, Oranges (London: Heinemann Ltd, 1967), 102.

National Park Service 65

incident the archeological effects of the Dummett

homestead certainly must occur with[in] the Sea-

shore boundary as well.” Brewer also asserted that

the building known as the summer house, on the

other side of the peninsula in the lagoon on pilings

“would have certainly have been inside the Seashore

boundary.”

220

The Postwar Citrus Surge,

Other Subtropical Crops,

and the People to Grow

Them

Following the Civil War, new residents moved into

Florida. Prewar immigration had come mostly from

southern states. Still a sparsely populated state,

Florida continued to attract people from southern

states, especially former Confederates seeking areas

where Reconstruction governments had little or no

real authority. The state also attracted new residents

from the northern states, who, unlike most ex-Con-

federates, had capital to invest. War correspondents

had familiarized northern and midwestern readers

with southern regions. Migrants came in search of

warmth, inexpensive land, and “climate cures,”

much touted by medical professionals at the time.

A journey made in 1869 by John Milton Hawks illus-

trated how sparsely settled was the Seashore area

immediately following the war. Although Volusia

County’s population had increased by almost 50

percent between the 1860 and 1870 U.S. censuses,

the entire county still claimed only 1,723 residents

in 1870.

221

Hawks stated that the only houses on the Hillsboro

River between New Smyrna and the Haulover Canal

were those of Captain Collier at Castle Windy, J. D.

Mitchell at Oak Hill, William Williams (also known

as Bill Scobie) a mile beyond Mitchell, Arad Sheldon

yet another mile on, a shanty at Drawdy’s cornfield

on the Alvarez Place (later Hawk’s Seashore) and

Henry Sawyer’s place a half mile below Drawdy’s.

Hawks stated that there were no wharves at that

time, which made it necessary for passengers to

remove shoes and stockings and roll up trousers in

order to debark. He reported that the Haulover

Canal was marked by two stakes standing in the

water half a mile from the shore. Although the trav-

elers had no problem finding the canal, the entrance

was so shallow that they had to unload the boat and

drag it into the canal, where there was deeper water.

They were able to “engage” lodging with an

unnamed family, but had to leave their supplies in

the boat about a quarter of a mile out in the water,

away from the “lean and hungry dogs and hogs that

roam along those shores.”

222

The travelers had to use their own provisions for

food although the boys of the family eventually

showed up with enough ducks for all. The house

had no floor and the woman of the house was

spinning yarn on a large wheel and smoking a pipe

when they arrived. A hen was tied in a corner of the

room, accompanied by its chicks. The travelers slept

on 6-foot-long boards placed on a table and pro-

tected by mosquito netting.

223

The reminiscences of Nancy Jane Dixon, who

moved from Kentucky and homesteaded on the

Indian River in 1870, are another indicator of how

remote and sparsely populated the area was in the

decades following the Civil War. Arriving with her

husband, Robert Dixon, who had been advised to

move to Florida for his health, Nancy “saw nothing

enticing, only the climate.” When she saw their first

home “of round pine logs; one door, no shutter, no

window; one end sawed off so as to permit a boat to

be taken out,” her young daughter broke into tears.

Soon, Sand Point (Titusville) got its first sawmill,

and the Dixons built a larger house, but it had no

ceiling and was not painted until about 1890. For

many years, provisions that could not be home-

grown were transported from Jacksonville, by way

of New Smyrna.

224

In later decades the Seashore area participated,

although on a small scale, in the “boosterism” and

the homesteading that was widespread throughout

the nation and in Florida in the 1880s and 1890s.

Florida’s political and business leaders saw that the

state’s natural resources were the most desirable

and profitable assets available to encourage

investment of northern capital. Land and climate

that could produce semitropical products lured

growers. Abundant wildlife attracted sportsmen to

spend their money in Florida. Fish, birds, and the

220. Griffin and Miller, Mullet on the Beach, 122-23; Brewer, “Archeological and Ethnohistorical Overview,” 79-81.

221. John Milton Hawks, The East Coast of Florida: A Descriptive Narrative (Lynn, Mass.: Lewis and Winship, 1887);

“Population of Florida by Counties, 1830-1945,” 1945 Florida State Census, 10-11.

222. Hawks, East Coast, 23-24.

223. Hawks, East Coast, 25-27.

224. Letter of Mrs. Nancy Jane Dixon, March 24,1896, included as Appendix A to James D. Mote, “Historic Resource Study

Status Report, Canaveral National Seashore, Florida” (Denver: National Parks Service, Denver Service Center, 1977), 68-75.

66 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

exotic alligators, of which there seemed to be an

endless supply at the time, lured sports-minded

tourists. For example, Webb’s Guide touted that Oak

Hill’s location on the Hillsboro River (Mosquito

Lagoon), which held fine fish, was only five miles

from the head of the Indian River, “where may be

found some of the best black-bass fishing and alli-

gator-shooting in this section.” In the 1880s, there

was “sufficient travel to support a $4-per-day hotel”

and Webb thought that the volume of travelers was

bound to increase with the deepening and straight-

ening of the channel of the “Coast Canal” (see

Chapter Four).

225

In the early 1880s, George Barbour wrote that

“Florida is rapidly becoming a Northern colony.”

He credited the national bank panic of 1873 with

spurring northern investors to choose a new kind of

investment: agriculture in warm climates, especially

orange growing. Northern “immigrants” (the nine-

teenth-century word for new residents) were

flocking to central Florida, especially, rather than

the more populous north Florida region.

226

Barbour also noted that the immigrants’ attitudes

toward profit and capital would set them apart from

Florida natives for at least a generation and,

therefore, the northern immigrants would tend to

form their own social and spatial communities, at

least until the natives became more like the new-

comers. He pointed out that in Florida as elsewhere,

“the old order of things passes away, giving place to

the new.”

227

Guides, encyclopedias, directories, and pamphlets

were published touting the promise of agricultural

pursuits in Florida, especially citrus culture. The

titles of the publications that promoted economic

development attempted to relay a sense of honesty

and earnestness, exemplified by Oliver Crosby’s

1879 “Florida Facts Both Bright and Blue: A Guide

Book to Intending Settlers, Tourists, and Investors

from a Northerner’s Standpoint—Plain Unvar-

nished Truth without ‘Taffy’—No Advertisements

or Puffs.” The Florida Star, a local paper in New

Smyrna Beach, encouraged northerners to buy or

homestead land and “find the surest road to pros-

perity by coming to the mild, genial, and sunny

south.”

228

Northern newspapers such as The Boston

Floridian and The Florida New Yorker also touted

Florida’s development opportunities.

229

These

sorts of publications usually contained advertise-

ments by businesses in Florida and by businesses in

northern cities. Northern advertisers frequently

focused on travel routes via steamboat and later rail

travel lines heading to Florida. Florida businesses

frequently advertised agricultural tools.

As historian Jerrell Shofner observed in his history

of Brevard County: “Although citrus would emerge

as the paramount crop, the landowner with a small

grove, a garden with one or more varieties of vege-

tables and perhaps some pineapple, sugar cane or

guavas was more representative of his neighbors

than one who specialized in any of these.”

230

“Booster” literature of the 1880s listed orange

culture as the most promising category in places

such as Oak Hill and Eldora. The literature fre-

quently listed bee-keeping, a complementary

endeavor which produced honey from citrus

blossoms while the bees carried pollen to fertilize

the citrus flowers.

John Hawks claimed in his 1887 publication that

within a five-mile radius of the Oak Hill post office

there were 220 acres of orange groves of which

about a quarter had borne fruit. At Oak Hill, citrus

growing was supplemented to a large degree by the

apiary business as well as by vegetable gardening for

local sales or barter (truck farming). Together, Oak

Hill and Eldora boasted between 500 and 600 bee

colonies. Hawks claimed that Eldora had a number

of “promising young groves.” At Eldora, Major Car-

penter, Mr. Nelson, and H. H. Shryock were

engaged in apiaries. Messrs. King, Watson and

“Sohman” (Lohman) had groves and gardens; the

Eldora postmaster, Mr. Shryock, also had an orange

grove, and there were several groves owned by non-

residents. Other sources report the raising or

processing of additional subtropical crops at Eldora,

but the level of production remains uncertain.

Among crops other than the much-reported citrus

and honey were olives, indigo, Spanish moss for

packing material, pecans, hearts of palm, palmetto

berries for medicinal purposes, palms for decorative

purposes and palmetto fiber for brushes. A little

farther south, Haulover was considered adapted to

225. Webb, Florida, 109.

226. At this time, new residents from other parts of the United States were often referred to as “immigrants,” while new

residents from other nations were termed “foreigners.” The term “immigration” did not carry the connotation of

foreign birth as it often does today. The Florida Bureau of Immigration was charged with encouraging settlement and

development of the state, not with overseeing foreign nationals.

227. Barbour, Florida for Tourists, 225, 229.

228. “Come South,” The Florida Star, (New Smyrna Beach, November 1877) Vol. 1, No. 10, 10.

229. Josslyn Stiner, “Eldora: Ghost of Florida’s Past,” 2005, unpublished manuscript CANA files.

230. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 179.

National Park Service 67

orange, pineapple, banana, and lemon growing.

231

According to an 1877 article published in The

Florida Star, one of Eldora’s founders, Mr. Julian S.

Watson had “pineapple plants—1500 in number—

growing nicely.

”

232

The harvesting and drying of saw palmetto berries

for use in a patent medicine was a short-lived, but

profitable, endeavor within the boundary of today’s

Seashore. Berries were picked on the barrier island

as well as Merritt Island, then dried in the sun

before being shipped out to be made into “San-

metto,” a tonic for lung and prostrate trouble that,

like many patent medicines, was 20 percent or more

alcohol. George Wilkinson pioneered this agri-

culture pursuit, having drying yards at Eldora until

1908, when he removed his operations to Hawk’s

Park (present-day Edgewater). Wilkinson continued

to hire Eldora residents to pick berries along the

beach.

233

Henry Playters Wilkinson recalled his

aunts Nell and Emy having to work in the berry yard

completely covered in long dresses and standing in

sacks to protect themselves from the ever-present

mosquitoes. Berry pickers also had to watch out for

rattlesnakes and the occasional bear that became

“intoxicated upon eating the sun-fermented

berries.”

234

Interestingly, the photographs dis-

played in the Eldora State House show African

American berry pickers, although few accounts

exist of the African American population in Eldora

at this time. A lesser known product of the saw pal-

metto berry (which apparently failed to catch on)

was Palmetto Drink, a blend of fruit and berry

juice.

235

In-migration and Out-

migration

As in so many human endeavors, it paid for Florida

to advertise. Communities began to develop along

the banks of the Seashore’s waterways, evidenced

by the creation of post offices. Post offices were

established at Oak Hill in 1875, and at Eldora and

Haulover in 1882, and Shiloh in 1884.

236

Among the

park’s displays are the Eldora Post Office record

book, which dates from April 1894 to March 1895,

and a replica envelope with a two-cent stamp and

Eldora, Florida, postmark dated 1894. Jerrell

Shofner reports varying frequency of mail deliv-

eries, usually by steamer, to the different post offices

on the islands. Some received mail once a week,

others twice a week, and some the luxury of delivery

six days a week.

237

Postmasters of the era were

usually locally important farmers and leaders. Prior

to the 1890s, postal patrons in rural areas came to

community post offices to collect their mail.

Because a position as postmaster was a political

position, appointees were expected to use their

position to influence voters on behalf of their

political benefactors. Before the beginning of rural

free delivery (RFD) of the mail in the 1890s, post-

masters enjoyed an audience that gathered within

their own building whom they might regale or

influence. Postmasters also influenced local

political views by detaining delivery of the oppo-

sition’s mail, although such interference was

illegal.

238

In 1886, W. P. Shryock was postmaster at Eldora; M.

J. Walker held that position by 1889. In 1889, the

231. Elliott’s, 29; Hawks, East Coast, 92-93; Webb, Florida, 109; Ann Towner, “The History of Eldora and Surrounding Area,” 79-

80, draft typescript at Canaveral National Seashore.

232. “Up the Hillsborough,” The Florida Star, Nov. 1877, Vol. 1, No. 10, page number indecipherable.

233. Oral history interview with Henry Playters Wilkinson, of Edgewater, Florida, March 10, 1989, copy of transcript in

Canaveral National Seashore files.

234. James D. Mote, Historic Resource Study Status Report: Canaveral National Seashore (Denver: Denver Service Center,

Historic Preservation Division, National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, 1977), 57.

235. Bo Poetner, Old Town by the Sea: A Pictorial History of New Smyrna Beach (Donning Company Publishers, 2002), 76.

236. Alford O. Bradbury and E. Story Hallock, A Chronology of Florida Post Offices (n.p.: The Florida Federation of Stamp

Clubs, 1962).

237. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 1: 136-39.

238. Wayne E. Fuller, The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 295-97.

FIGURE 20. African American laborers

gathering saw palmetto berries. (Photo

courtesy of Gary Luther)

68 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Eldora post office was closed and merged with Oak

Hill. Shiloh Post Office remained in service for over

70 years–from 1884 to 1955. In 1886, Shiloh’s Post-

master George C. Kuhl, an orange grower with 10

acres of groves, oversaw the post office in a relative’s

general store, the only such store at Shiloh. Mails

arrived on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

239

In 1889, Haulover Post Office‘s name was changed

to Clifton, then was merged with Shiloh in 1896.

Haulover Post Office had been opened and closed

several times, but in 1886 was favored with daily

mail service.

240

Charles H. Nauman, appointed postmaster at Hau-

lover in 1886, probably typified the rural political

appointee. Nauman, originally from Lancaster,

Pennsylvania, could claim influential kin connec-

tions as nephew of long-time settler and major

orange grower, Douglas Dummett. He was also

executor of Dummett’s estate. Nauman subse-

quently became a grove owner, news dealer, and a

county leader.

241

The Florida State Gazetteer and Business Directory

claimed that Eldora had a population of 40 in 1886,

and boasted a public school with Miss M.O. Puckett

as teacher. The directory listed oranges and honey

as the principal shipments, but tangerines, lemons,

grapefruit, indigo, olives, figs, pecans, and guavas

were also grown in the area. In addition to crops,

settlers harvested and exported local resources and

game, such as salt, turtle meat, turtle eggs, and bear

meat.

242

Orange growers planted from 2 to 8 acres,

with Fred Lohman’s 8 acres the largest enterprise.

Lohman, J. H. King, and J. S. Watson listed them-

selves also as “vegetable and truck farmers.”

According to the Gazetteer, land at Eldora sold for

approximately $30 per acre, although Elliott’s

Florida Encyclopedia, published three years later in

1889, offered a more conservative price for Eldora

land at $5 to $20 per acre.

243

Just north of Haulover, Shiloh qualified as the

northernmost settlement on Merritt Island,

claiming 35 residents in 1886. It was so situated

astride Brevard and Volusia Counties that its trade

and social affairs were divided between the two. The

Florida State Gazetteer considered oranges to be

Shiloh’s “principal export.” Groves at Shiloh were

larger than those at Eldora with D. F. Buky claiming

the most land under cultivation at 12 acres. Shiloh

also boasted a school teacher, W. F. Locky.

244

Haulover’s residents numbered 100 in 1886 with

most groves planting 5 to 6 acres. Florida Fruit

Company’s 20 acres was by far the largest holding at

Haulover. Pineapples were also a major export of

Haulover. E. D. Seabrook was the schoolteacher.

Wanton Webb’s subscription guide to Florida

depicted mixed regional origins for the settlers in

the Seashore. Webb’s Guide reported that Eldora

was first settled in 1877 by J. H. King of Georgia and

J. S. Watson and others from St. Louis, Missouri.

245

Its population was small, but in the winter was

“largely increased by tourists, etc.” Elliott’s Florida

Encyclopedia put Eldora’s population at 40 in

1889.

246

Webb reported that Oak Hill was started

after the Civil War by “native Floridians” who were

soon joined by arrivals from New England and New

York. On the other hand, Webb’s Guide declared

that Haulover was a settlement with a pre-war char-

acter. According to the guide, the settlement had

been started in 1852 by the late Captain D.

Dummett and 35 years later, its 100 settlers “were

mostly white and to the manor born,” suggesting

persons of wealthy or upper-class birth, although

this could have been meant ironically.

247

African Americans were among the successful

growers. John Hawks claimed that “Sanchez and

Campbell, colored men” had groves worth several

thousand dollars each. Robert Sanchez, who

oversaw and transported citrus from Dummett’s

Grove, married Louisa Dummett, Douglas

239. Bradbury and Hallock, Florida Post Offices; Florida Gazetteer, 408.

240. Bradbury and Hallock, Florida Post Offices; Shofner, History of Brevard County, 136.

241. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 136; Strickland, “Dummett Family Saga,” 12-13; John R. Richards, comp., Florida State

Gazetteer and Business Directory, Vol. 1 (New York: The South Publishing Company, 1886), 184.

242. Poetner, 76.

243. Florida State Gazetteer, 136; Elliott’s Florida Encyclopedia (Jacksonville: E. J. Elliott, 1889).

244. Florida State Gazetteer, 408-09.

245. Local lore compiled in 1979 by Ann Towner, a volunteer for the National Park Service, holds that the area of Eldora was

part of the Caroline Elizabeth McHardy Spanish Land Grant. The claim for U.S. confirmation of the Spanish land title,

however, does not mention the Eldora area and the 1818 Spanish surveys of the McHardy grant do not include Eldora.

The claim states that the McHardy lands were bounded on the east by “marsh islands” (isletas manglares), not the

Atlantic Ocean. Confirmed Claim M26, Spanish Land Grants manuscript collection, now at Bureau of Archives,

Tallahassee. Other claims on behalf of C. E. McHardy and Robert McHardy, her husband were also consulted. Confirmed

Claims M27, M28, Unconfirmed Claim L1.

246. Elliott’s, 260.

247. Webb, ed., Webb’s Florida, Part I, 84, 109-110.

National Park Service 69

Dummett’s daughter by his common-law wife.

Dummett had acknowledged Louisa and her sib-

lings as his children. In 1873, upon Douglas

Dummett’s death, Louisa and her siblings inherited

equally in their father’s grove as directed in his

will.

248

Perhaps Robert Sanchez or his parents had

been former slaves or free blacks associated with

Douglas Dummett before the Civil War. Dummett’s

divorced wife had been the widowed Frances

Sanchez Hunter, and Frances might have brought

Robert or his parents into the marriage as an asset.

Hence, the “Sanchez” surname. This is, however,

only reasonable conjecture based on common prac-

tices at the time; the documentation to clarify this

speculation has not yet been found. African

American Andréw Jackson, who had married

Douglas Dummett’s daughter Kate, was listed as an

orange grower at Haulover. Like Campbell, Jackson

had four acres of oranges. The Corps of Engineers’

1881 map showed the location of Campbell on

Mosquito Lagoon just north of what is now New

Haulover Canal, while A. Jackson’s grove was

located south of “Old” Haulover Canal on the

Indian River. Jackson’s land was depicted with grove

“stippling” but Campbell’s was not depicted as a

grove. Campbell, Jackson, and Kate Dummett

Jackson are buried in a small cemetery north of

Haulover Canal.

249

Butler Campbell, a former slave, had settled in the

Seashore at Clifton near Haulover in 1872 and

named his homestead Laughing Waters. Butler

Campbell’s tombstone in the Campbell Cemetery

gives his birth date as October 26, 1848, which cer-

tainly suggests his birth into slavery. Campbell

arrived in Florida from Columbia, South Carolina.

He may have been one of about 500 families that

were resettled in Florida by the Federal government.

Officers of the United States Colored Troops sta-

tioned at Hilton Head South, Carolina, in the fall of

1865 organized The Florida Land and Lumber

Company to start a colony made up of freedmen

and those friendly to them near Port Orange near

Mosquito Inlet. Most of the homesteaders were dis-

pleased with the light sandy soil and relocated.

250

Butler Campbell’s son, Arthur, has provided some

insight into life in the small African American set-

tlement of Clifton in the early decades of the

twentieth century. Butler had been taught to read

and write in South Carolina and eventually was able

to purchase 80 acres near the Haulover from the

U.S. government. Arthur described conditions in his

childhood as “brutal” and remembered that “fried

white bacon” and grits were the mainstays of the

family diet.

251

He worked as a hunting and fishing

guide, cut wood, and possibly was a laborer on the

building of the new Haulover Canal. Later, he had

some success as a truck farmer and citrus grower.

Butler gave each of his sons 6 acres, and Arthur built

himself a five-room house south of his father’s

place. Arthur remembered that most black people

worked in the citrus groves or as domestics for white

families. A preacher came one Sunday a month to

hold services. Sometime early in the twentieth

century, a one-room schoolhouse was built for the

black children of the Clifton community with

lumber brought over on a sailboat from Titusville.

Later research has since shown the schoolhouse was

actually built between 1890 and 1891.

The creation of the school illustrated the impor-

tance that Butler Campbell and his neighbor,

Andréw Jackson, placed on education as a means for

improving the lives of their children. Rules esta-

blished by the Board of Public Instruction for

Brevard County in 1883 dictated that, “any locality

claiming a school must provide a public school-

house, must select at least one trustee, and secure a

teacher holding a valid certificate.”

252

A neighbor,

Wade Holmes, donated a one-acre lot adjacent to

the Campbell property for the building site. Docu-

mentation for the historical marker commemorating

the Clifton School includes an 1896 hand-drawn

map depicting the location of the lot on Wade

Holmes’ property and a Warranty deed transferring

the lot to the Board of Public Instruction for Brevard

County in 1905.

253

Holmes, Jackson, and Campbell

built a one room, 12x16 structure of heart pine

lumber.

254

248. Excerpt of will of Douglas Dummett, quoted in Strickland, “Dummett Family Saga,” 12.

249. Strickland, “Dummett Family Saga,” 53; Florida State Gazetteer, 184; “Dummett” family file in Biographical files, St.

Augustine Historical Society.

250. Shofner, History of Brevard Country, 136; Hawks, East Coast, 71-72; “Big Hurricane of 1926 Blew Oranges Off Trees,” Star

Advocate, February 23, 1983, (typescript in CANA research files); oral history interview with Arthur Campbell, conducted

April 12, 1983, transcript on file at Canaveral National Seashore. Most African Americans in the Seashore at this time

were likely to have been former slaves as the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued only a few years before, in

1863.

251. Oral history interview with Arthur Campbell.

252. The Florida Star, November 15, 1883, 1.

253. CANA park files, “Clifton Colored Schoolhouse Documentation,” July 28, 2005, Exhibits 31 and 32.

254. Roz Foster, interviews with Campbell family descendents, 1996, 2001-2004.

70 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Nine students attended the school, five of Butler

Campbell’s children and four of Andréw Jackson’s.

Classes were held during the summer months so the

students could help with the citrus groves and other

crops during the winter months. Professor

Mahaffey, also African American, was the teacher.

Newspaper accounts on the annual closing exer-

cises of the school in 1892 and 1893 offer a

fascinating glimpse into the curriculum and quality

of the education. Subjects consisted of reading,

physiology, advanced hygiene, United States history,

geography, familiar science, English and math. The

students “showed thoroughness in all their studies

which reflects great credit on Professor Mahaffey,

their teacher.”

255

Historian and retired journalist

Weona Cleveland postulated that “Mahaffey must

have been a man of astonishing culture and edu-

cation to have handled such a wide range of studies

required by these students.”

256

She also mentions

an article published in the Florida Star on August

18, 1893, extolling “this school, though small, it is

one of the best in the country… The children are as

orderly and well behaved as any children we ever

met.” That year, Latin was mentioned as a subject in

which the students showed great proficiency. By

1910, most of the children were no longer of school

age or had moved on to other schools seeking

higher education.

257

The school certainly con-

tributed to the surrounding community and made a

difference in the lives of its students.

However, during the 1960’s, the United States gov-

ernment confiscated North Merritt Island, forcing

island families to relocate elsewhere. The buildings

left behind were either demolished or disassembled

piece by piece, eradicating any evidence of habi-

tation. The Clifton schoolhouse was overlooked or

perhaps thought to be of such little value that

weather and time would take its own toll and

destroy the structure. Fortunately, it survived along

with some of its contents, such as an old trunk filled

with letters, postcards, receipts and other Campbell

family items. While the trunk fell into the hands of

private collectors, the school house itself was redis-

covered by a group of historians, including the great

granddaughter of Butler and Lucy Campbell, led by

John Stiner of Canaveral National Seashore on

January 29, 2004. Canaveral National Seashore

worked with Brevard Historical Commission to

salvage remaining portions of the Clifton School-

house to utilize for educational and cultural

resource purposes.

The communities of the Seashore did not increase

much in population after initial settlement in the

1880s. R. L. Polk’s 1907 Florida Gazetteer stated

there were 50 residents at Shiloh with the Griffis and

the Kuhl families (also listed in 1886) still in resi-

dence. Hattie Griffis was postmaster. Clifton at

Haulover was attributed 50 residents–one half the

population in 1886. Campbell and Jackson were still

there growing fruit. The 1907 Gazetteer carried no

listing for Eldora nor for Allenhurst (Allenhurst was

not established as a post office until 1909). Church

denominations within communities were listed in

this publication, but no church listings appeared for

communities that were once in the Seashore.

258

Perhaps Shiloh and Clifton had become recognized

population centers by virtue of their status as voting

precincts. Shiloh and Clifton were the two commu-

nities included in Polk’s 1907 listing and were the

two contemporary voting precincts. Florida State

Census figures, collected midway between Federal

censuses, trace the population path of the Seashore

by precinct. Shiloh precinct’s population declined

between 1925 and 1945. Shiloh’s African American

percentage of the population was halved between

1925 and 1945–from 21 percent in 1925 represented

by 39 individuals to 16 percent in 1935 with 23

persons and down to 10 percent in 1945 with only

10 persons. In 1925, Shiloh claimed a total of 181

residents; in 1935, 141; and 97 in 1945.

Clifton precinct’s population grew by 40 percent

between 1925 and 1935, from 191 to 330, with all of

255. “Closing Exercises of the Clifton Colored School,” Indian River Advocate, August 5, 1892, 7.

256. Weona Cleveland, “Clifton School Students Won Praise in 1893,” Florida Today, March 3, 2004.

257. CANA park files, “Clifton Colored Schoolhouse Documentation,” 1.

FIGURE 21. View of Clifton School, around 1890.

(Photograph courtesy of Bob Paty)

258. R. L. Polk Co., Florida State Gazetteer (Jacksonville: R. L. Polk Co., 1907).

National Park Service 71

the increase among the white population. In 1925,

African Americans composed 25 percent of its pop-

ulation, but by 1935 that had fallen to 13 percent.

Population fell among Clifton white residents in the

next 10 years by almost 18 percent and fell 14

percent for African Americans. In 1945, Clifton

claimed 238 residents, an increase of 25 percent

over 1925. The actual numbers for African Amer-

icans were small: 44 in 1925; 43 in 1935; 36 in 1945.

Population within the Seashore declined from 1925

to 1945 while the population of Brevard and Volusia

Counties soared during those years. Brevard

County’s population rose 63 percent between 1925

and 1945; Volusia’s rose 69 percent.

The land policies and practices put in place by the

United States Government during and after the Civil

War encouraged settlement on public land.

Although the Homestead Act of 1862 is usually asso-

ciated with settlement of western lands in the

United States, the homestead lands were available

nationwide. Free land was offered to homesteaders

if they occupied the land for five years, but an

administrative fee to establish one’s title had to be

paid in cash. New Floridians indeed availed them-

selves of the policy, although the role of the

homestead policy has usually been overlooked for

Florida. The Homestead Act excluded those “who

had borne arms against the United States or given

aid and comfort to its enemies,” thus foreclosing

those who had fought for or assisted the Confed-

erate States.

J. H. King acquired his property at Eldora using the

homestead policy. Well-known residents of central

Florida, whose families were already well-estab-

lished in the area, also took advantage of the act,

such as Jacob Summerlin, who also became the first

keeper of the Mosquito Lagoon House of

Refuge.

259

Other post-Civil War land policies were

fashioned to abet and encourage recently emanci-

pated slaves in land acquisition and discourage

acquisition by former Confederates. Also, after the

war, many residents in the former Confederate

states experienced depleted financial situations by

virtue of manumission of their enslaved workers,

who had represented sizable capital investments as

well as a labor source, and of wartime destruction

and related diminished production. Thus it was cit-

izens of the northern states and, based on deeds,

also of the midwestern states who had the funds to

relocate and acquire lands as well as to acquire the

items needed to make land productive. Wartime

publicity about southern locations and Union sol-

diers’ attraction to southern areas encouraged

northern and midwestern residents to come to the

South, some arriving for the first time, others

returning to their southern military postings.

At the time that they were established, these com-

munities within Seashore lands were more tied to

waterborne transportation than overland routes.

The communities were settled in the 1880s (except

for the older, pre-Civil War Haulover settlement),

before the extension of rail service to the mainland

areas near the Seashore. Not until 1892 did rail

service down the east coast of Florida reach as far

south as New Smyrna.

Even after the railroad came, the last leg of the trip

to the communities of the Seashore area was by

water well into the early twentieth century. The

main north-south water corridors were established

early on, but they remained subject to adjustments.

Between 1924 and 1934, changes to the water route

made by the Army Corps of Engineers deprived

Eldora of its location on the designated and main-

tained water route. The channel was relocated from

the winding route near the barrier island’s west

bank, near Eldora, to the other side of Mosquito

Lagoon, where it followed a new straightened

course near the bank of the mainland. This action

would contribute to the eventual decline of the

Eldora community.

Eldora

The lands that became the Eldora community

remained U.S. public lands until the 1880s.

260

Lore

and contemporary “booster” literature attributes

the settlement of Eldora to settlers from Missouri

and Georgia. The Georgia connection was Joseph

H. King, who acquired 150 acres in 1884 in Section

34, Township 18, Range 35, by taking advantage of

the Homestead Act.

261

Cash purchase of public

lands was also possible. In January 1883, J. St. Cyr

Watson of St. Louis Missouri, purchased 163 acres

from the U.S. Government for $186 in the area

259. Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 416. The acquisition of

homestead land by King, who was from Georgia, and by Summerlin, who had procured cattle for the Confederacy,

appears counter to the homestead policy.

260. Most earlier claims in the area from the colonial era were not allowed by the U.S. Land Claims Commission and reverted

to the sovereign nation (United States). Thus lands might have been occupied and improved and at one time under

private ownership, but in the 1880s were part of the public domain.

261. Deed Book V, page 177, Volusia County public records.

72 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

already known as Eldora.

262

Lore claims that the

name was a combination of the names of the Ellen

and Dora Pitzer. But other folklore claims that

Watson and King first came to the area following

rumors of buried treasure, and “Eldora” might be a

shortened version of “Eldorado,” a common

Spanish term suggesting wealth, riches or treasure.

Watson hired R. S. Stadden to survey and plat his

new property into lots, all with frontage on the

Hillsboro River (Mosquito Lagoon). Stadden’s

survey (recorded 1884) showed wild orange trees, a

rectangular clearing fronting on the river and was

bisected by a “wagon road to the ocean” leading

from a wharf. A shell mound is shown near where

the extant Mouton-Wells House (Eldora State

House) would later be erected. The riverfront

clearing was aligned with the shoreline rather than

with the government survey lines.

263

Watson’s subsequent sales of his land created an

enclave of owners or residents from St. Louis.

Watson returned to St. Louis either to market or to

complete pending sales of his new property to other

St. Louis residents. During the summer and fall of

1883, Watson and his wife Luella were in St. Louis

conveying lots to Frank R. Meyer, George N. Pitzer,

John and Lucy B. Ralston, Ella Chambers, William P.

Shryock, and Russell Hancock. The purchasers

often reciprocated as witnesses to each other’s

deeds. According to the deeds, the properties sold

initially for approximately $10 per acre.

264

Many of

the lots purchased at the this time were titled to a

wife, and very few were titled in joint names.

The relocation of settlers to Florida from the

Midwest has been recognized in local histories, but

this west-to-east movement has been little noted in

the larger context of national migration and set-

tlement. Focus on migration of settlers from the

North with little attention to those coming from the

Midwest might be attributed to reliance on booster

literature, which was published in the North,

focused on a northern market, and with little recog-

nition or praise for settlers from other regions in the

literature. For example, Tangerine (near today’s

Orlando) in present-day Orange County was settled

by arrivals from Michigan and Illinois.

265

Quite

often, a church congregation and its building served

as focal point for settlement communities of Orange

County. Land records, booster-era directories, and

the collected lore, however, do not furnish refer-

ences to a church at Eldora.

Some of the original purchasers soon sold their

property at a substantial increase in price. Whether

the price charged by Watson was a pre-development

price to acquire seed money to make the initial pur-

chase of public land from the Federal government,

or whether there were subsequent improvements on

the Eldora lands, either by clearing, planting, or

building, was not revealed in the public records.

Less than a year after taking title, George Pitzer sold

his land in July 1884 to Henrietta Sleole for an

average price of more than $50 per acre–more than

five times his purchase price.

266

The deeds did not

specify improvements, if any. Perhaps the promise

of an improved and engineered intracoastal

waterway, which in the 1880s passed right by

Eldora, enhanced the value of the property. Dredges

worked on maintaining Old Haulover Canal and the

channel to its east in 1885 and 1886. In 1888, New

Haulover Canal was opened (see Chapter Four).

267

By 1893, J. St. Cyr Watson, by then “unmarried,”

had moved to Titusville and sold his large lot 8, con-

taining 38 acres, as well as Lot 1 to Mary A. S.

DeGrauw of Jamaica, Queens, New York, wife of

Aaron DeGraw. Henrietta Cole [Sleole?] and Laura

Haltwanger sold Mary DeGraw the adjoining Lot

262. Deed Book L, page 615, Volusia County public records. The deed reads “J. St. Cyr Watson of Eldora.”

263. Deed Book O, page 301, re-recorded in Map Book 20, page 153, Volusia County public records.

FIGURE 22. R.M. Stadden Survey of Eldora, as

recorded Jan. 24, 1884. (Volusia County Deed

Book “0” Page 301)

264. Deed Book L, page 698; Book N, page 401, 602, 660, 661; Book O, page 124, Volusia County public records.

265. William Fremont Blackman, History of Orange County, Florida, Vol. 1(1927; reprint Chuluota, Fla.: The Mickler House

Publishers, 1973).

266. Deed Book R, page 556, Volusia County public records.

267. See Chapter 4.

National Park Service 73

268

By this time, Florida was becoming a winter

vacation destination for residents of northern states.

Coronado Beach, New Smyrna Beach, and

Ormond-by-the-Sea touted their hotels and

weather to northern audiences. A 1905 brochure

exalts New Smyrna as “the land of flowers, a

sportsman paradise, the tourist’s Mecca, and the

record town for the rod and the gun.”

269

Excursions

to interesting and exotic sites were offered. Turtle

Mound, just north of Eldora, was a spot of interest.

Was it hyperbole in advertising or a typographical

error when an 1890s tourist guide suggesting a day’s

excursion to Turtle Mound gave its size as 300 feet in

height and a mile in circumference?

270

Eldora tradition maintains that the DeGraws used

their property to winter in Florida. In the early

twentieth century, William Warnock, the DeGraws’

nephew, inherited their Eldora property. Warnock

and his wife annually hosted visitors from shortly

after New Year’s Day to early April. The Warnocks

kept a guest book which provides a fascinating

glimpse into Eldora between 1908 and 1913.

271

The

Warnocks and their guests stayed in a two-story,

nine-room structure known as the “Home Place.” It

is referred to as the main dwelling house in the War-

nocks’ sales prospectus for the property and it later

became known as the “Eldora House” or “Eldora

Hotel.” The Home Place was of wood-framed con-

struction, L-shaped in plan, and had a two-story, full

façade front porch. The building stood 200 feet

northeast of the existing Mouton-Wells (State)

House and was demolished in 1992 after it had

become a safety hazard.

Some of the Warnocks’ visitors came from northern

states for extended visits, sometimes lasting the

entire winter season. Others visited for a few days

from nearby towns in Florida, such as Jacksonville

or St. Augustine. Judge George C. Gibbs of Jackson-

ville “commuted” frequently to Eldora during the

season. The Warnocks’ daughter Leonora had

married Gibbs, and she often visited her parents

with her daughter Margaret. Margaret was nick-

named “Eldora.”and first came to Eldora as an

infant of two months.

272

Alice Smethhurst jour-

neyed from St. Augustine, where her relative, Dr.

Andréw Anderson, lived. Dr. Anderson was a close

friend and business associate of Henry Flagler, head

of the Florida East Coast Railway. Although river

traffic passed within 200 yards of the Warnocks’

docks, most guests came to New Smyrna first by

train, then headed south along the barrier island.

The guest book mentions the route to New Smyrna

“via Riverside trail, Turtle Mound and the

beach.”

273

Alice Smethhurst was surprised by

Eldora’s “remoteness and inaccessibility.”

The guest book contains praise for Eldora from vis-

itors and notes about activities. Remarks about the

enjoyment of the usually balmy weather and the

peace at Eldora appear throughout the six years

spanned by the book. The Florida Star called

Florida “one of the most healthy spots on earth,”

where many “invalids from the North are to be

found in great numbers … many come to stay the

ravages of disease, sometimes in vain but usually

with benefit and very often with the most happy

results.”

274

Guests at the Hotel evidently agreed

with the article. On April 1, 1910, Margaret Eldora

Gibbs recorded that her health had been greatly

268. Deed Book 18, page 502; Book 20, page 501; Book 21, page 155, Volusia County public records.

269. Robert H. Weeks, New Smyrna, Volusia County, “The Land of Flowers,” History Facsimile Series East Florida, 1905, 1.

270. The Tourist Resorts of the Halifax and North Indian River Country (Seabreeze, Fla.: Peninsular Publishing Co, 1891), 6.

271. Warnock Home Place (Eldora) Guest Book, 1908-1913, photocopy in Seashore files.

272. Her nickname appears in Eldora Guestbook, photocopy in Seashore files, Northern District. Judge Gibbs was the grandson

of Col. George Couper Gibbs, who had been commandant of the Confederate post at Andersonville, Georgia, location of

the infamous Civil War prison for Union captives. Margaret Gibbs Watt, comp., The Gibbs Family of Long Ago and Near at

Hand, 1377-1967 ([St. Augustine?: Paramount Press, 1967]). Margaret “Eldora” Gibbs Worthington grew up to become a

professional and volunteer activist in Connecticut and Massachusetts on behalf of children and family issues, especially

for families of men in prison. In 1977, Pres. Jimmy Carter presented her with a National Activist Award. Obituary of

Margaret Gibbs Worthington, Florida Times-Union, January 6, 2002.

273. Guestbook, 30.

274. “The Health of Florida,” The Florida Star, March 1877, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1-2.

FIGURE 23. “The Home Place” / Eldora Hotel, 1908

– 1913. (Drawing by Gary Spurock)

74 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

improved by “the pure air, bright sunshine, and calm

restfulness.”

275

William Warnock himself wrote

“there is no reason why a sanatorium in this balmy

region should not, in time, rival the institution at

Battle Creek, Michigan.”

276

Eliza Willets wrote in

1908 of the “great pleasure to be once more in this

land of peace and love and sunshine.” She con-

sidered Eldora good for physical and spiritual health

since its “pure, balmy, life-giving air and wonderful

sunshine,” heals the body and induces spiritual

growth, “which seems so easy and so appropriate in

the beautiful spot, where nature reigns supreme.”

277

In addition to declaring Eldora’s health benefits,

guests also used the guest book to discuss various

recreational events. For hunters, the area’s sur-

rounding hammocks and woodlands boasted a

plethora of diverse game such as bear, deer, turkey,

squirrels, quail, and snipe.

278

One visitor remarked

on the similarity of cold baked “coon” to cold roast

turkey.

Chester and Margaret Willets wrote of duck

hunting, snipe shooting, digging for fiddler crabs,

and catching sheepshead (fish) during their nine-

day honeymoon at Eldora.

279

Nearby fishing camps

located along Mosquito Lagoon, made popular due

to the increased availability of outboard motors,

provided excellent grounds for catching bass, trout,

blue fish, whiting, red snapper, sailor’s choice,

pompano, oysters, clams, shrimp, and crabs.

280

Also in the guest book are notes about the improve-

ments to the property made by the Warnocks. When

they left at the end of the 1909 season, the Warnocks

reported “[a] new fence has been built around the

home place; a packing house; a new boat-house and

dock beside various repairs.” The following year

brought a new cistern and a “semi-pergola” or

arbor. The Northern backgrounds of many of the

visitors showed in their exuberant celebration of the

centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in 1909.

The annual observation of George Washington’s

birthday always brought festive, patriotic decoration

and crossed sectional lines. Church attendance is

not mentioned among the visitors’ activities.

Copies of photographs in the Seashore files, taken

during the early 1900s, show local families enjoying

various recreational activities in the presence of

their servants and caretakers. These domestic

workers account for most of Eldora’s African

American population at that time. An important and

much appreciated member of the Eldora com-

munity was Axie, the cook who prepared meals for

the Warnocks and their guests. Axie must have

served the DeGraws as well as the Warnocks,

because she is recorded as beginning her twenty-

first season at Eldora in January 1914. An anon-

ymous guest was moved on March 1, 1916, to pen

the following tribute to her:

To A x i e

Axie, the clever, the real Southern cook,

Needs never to get her skill from a book.

But bread, pies and cakes

She most suredly bakes

When placed on the table

Sharp eyes are unable

To find any scraps left by most ravenous guests.

Another essential member of the Eldora community

and a local “celebrity” was Dolly the mule. Ann

Towner’s history of Eldora describes the important

role of Dolly as a draft animal as well as a provider

of transportation from 1908 to 1915. Towner states

that Dolly was “community property” and that resi-

dents made use of her, her tack, and a wagon

275. Guestbook, 55.

276. Warnock, “Detailed Description of Eldora, Florida, 829 Acres. Wm. A. Warnock, Owner.” Typescript in Canaveral National

Seashore files, Northern District, (n.d.), 5.

277. Guestbook, 57.

278. Poetner, Old Town by the Sea, 81.

279. Chester and Margaret Willets, honeymoon reminiscences, attached to Eldora Guestbook, December 12-21, 1916;

photocopy in Seashore files.

FIGURE 24. Eldora State House. (Photo by John

Stiner, CANA Coll.)

280. T.C. Wilder, “The Saga of Eldora: A Legacy Preserved by a Legacy,” Library of Congress Local Legacies Program submission

report (New Smyrna Beach, FL 2000), 6; Weeks, Land of Flowers.

National Park Service 75

whenever they were needed. Lore states that Dolly

was kept next to the post office although the dates

for Dolly’s tenure do not match the dates for when

Eldora was an active post office. Dolly hauled

lumber, “dredged” gardens, and provided sled rides

on the dunes. Dolly’s grave was the only burial

reported to be located at Eldora. Her burial place

was disturbed in the process of subsequent con-

struction.

281

An entry in the Warnock guest book

records Dolly’s death on August 22, 1915. Mrs.

Warnock described Dolly as “a true and loyal and

faithful Eldoran. She deserves a golden bridle and a

sweet green pasture.”

282

Her tombstone rests in the

Eldora Statehouse Museum. Standing five feet high,

it reads simply, “Dolly, a faithful Eldoran 1908-

1915.”

When William Warnock advertised his holdings at

Eldora for sale, he listed seven buildings on the

property, including two boathouses with docks,

lumber shed and a bathing house, fruit-packing

house, barn, paint house and tool house, in addition

to the main residence. There were two rainwater

cisterns, windmill, and water tank. On the ocean

was a bathhouse with observatory above. In

addition to the main dwelling house and its out-

buildings, there were a 6-room house and a 4-room

house.

Lore assigns a construction date of 1893-1895 for

the existing Mouton-Wells House or “State House,”

but inspections by historical architects suggest a

construction date of 1915 to 1925. The house was

constructed by Marion Moulton. Marion and her

husband Julius had been among the original 1880s

settlers at Eldora. She died in 1926, and the house

was purchased from her heirs by Walter M. Wells, a

successful businessman and public servant on the

War Industries Board during World War I. Wells

died in his Florida house on April 1, 1938. The name

“State House” is attributed to its increasing use by

Mr. Murray Sams, who was a state attorney and

judge in Volusia County.

283

Charles A. and Ruth Taylor owned land in the

Eldora community and apparently hoped to take

advantage of the 1920’s real-estate boom in Florida.

Fueled by speculators, the phenomenon began at

Miami Beach, spread up the east and west coasts

and infused central Florida. In February 1926 the

boom reached its zenith then quickly fell. Few

banking controls, speculative purchases with little

cash down, construction delays resulting from over-

loaded transportation systems, and negative

campaigns by northern banks were factors in the

decline. Banks in Florida began to fail. Any possi-

bility of recovery of the real-estate market and

Florida economy was destroyed by the September

1926 hurricane, which leveled Miami Beach.

284

The

economic depression in Florida preceded the more

notorious 1929 nationwide and worldwide depres-

sions by three years.

Just as the boom reached its height and quickly

turned down, in February 1926, Charles and Ruth

Taylor subdivided Lots 7 and 8 into 50' by 100' lots,

excepting the irregular lots along the river. This was

the Eldora Sportsmen Subdivision which consisted

of 279 lots and seven streets. One lot was purchased

by John Schultz of Volusia County in 1926 who built

what is today called the Schultz House, one of the

few if not the only house ever constructed in the

subdivision. The building and associated garage

stand in mute testimony of what the Eldora area

would have become had not the depression hit.

285

The Taylors’ endeavor was ill-timed, but typical of

the frenzy of the Florida real estate boom of the

1920s. They registered their plat during the

downturn, which would become the end of the

281. Guestbook; Ann Towner,” The History of Eldora and Surrounding Area” (draft version) (Canaveral National Seashore,

1979), 111.

282. Guestbook, 105.

283. Towner, “History of Eldora,” 33.

284. Gannon, ed., New History of Florida, 290-97.

285. Department of the Interior National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places: The Schultz House, Volusia County,

Florida, nomination report, open-file, Canaveral National Seashore, 2002, Section 8.

FIGURE 25. Schultz-Leeper House. (NPS, 2002)

76 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Florida land boom. The Taylors’ subdivision joined

numerous subdivisions throughout Florida that lay

platted but undeveloped for years to come.

286

In the

late twentieth century, many of Florida’s 1920s-era

subdivisions were revived and developed, but not

Eldora. By then, Eldora had become part of

Canaveral National Seashore.

One other structure that no longer exists, although

it stood until 2003, warrants mention. The Eldora

Post Office/Packing Plant, also known as the Coble

Place was made up of two buildings joined by a

short connecting section. It stood approximately 75

yards north of the Mouton-Wells House. The

buildings were joined about 1971, reportedly by the

Summerlins, according to Towner’s “History of

Eldora”. Before that, the two buildings were sepa-

rated by three feet. According to Towner’s

“History,” the northern portion was the post office,

school and general store. Both sections had shed-

roofed additions at the rear, and a 16-foot-wide

shed-roofed screened porch joined the two sections

across the front or northeast side.

If one of these buildings was, in fact, the Eldora post

office, that would place the date of construction

between 1886 and 1889. According to Bradbury and

Hallock’s A Chronology of Florida Post Offices,

Eldora became a post office in 1886 and was relo-

cated to Oak Hill in 1889. Towner’s history states

that the post office was re-opened in 1894 and that it

was located in the original building at the time of the

“great freeze,” without giving the date of that par-

ticular freeze, leaving some room for debate. She

probably refers to the freeze of 1894-95, although

the 1886 freeze was also devastating. Although the

building no longer exists, Richard Helman reported

in 1984 that the estimated date of construction was

between 1871 and 1896.

287

The second structure that is no longer present was

the Leeper Guest House/Studio associated with the

Schultz house. It was constructed between 1969 and

1971 by Doris Leeper, a well-known artist and envi-

ronmental activist, whose sculpture hangs in the

terminal of the Orlando International Airport. It

was a wood-framed Modernist structure set on a

concrete slab and comprised of three distinct rect-

angular masses constructed at different times. The

building contained about 1,000 feet of floor area,

aluminum awning windows, and wooden flush

doors.

Seminole Rest

A notable survivor from the development that

occurred in the area of the Seashore in the late nine-

teenth century is the property known as Seminole

Rest. It is the site of two historic houses built on a

prehistoric Indian shell mound or midden, compo-

nents of which date as early as the second

millennium BCE.

288

In June 1866, a year after the

end of the Civil War, John L. S. Lawd

289

of Boston

sold to Jacob D. and Josephine Mitchell of

Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, one lot and part of

another in Range 35 East, property on the west side

of Mosquito Lagoon that Laud had purchased from

the U.S. Government in 1857. A few months later, J.

D. Mitchell paid the State of Florida $1.25 an acre

for Government Lots 2, 3 and a fractional part of 4,

Section 9, Township 19 South, Range 35 East. These

286. Map Book 9, page 122, Volusia County public records; Tebeau, History of Florida, 383-88.

FIGURE 26. View of Seminole Rest, ca. 1911. (From Memories of Oak Hill, CANA

287. “Determination of Eligibility for the Eldora Historic District,” 1984.

288. Horvath, Final Report of the Archeological Investigations at the Seminole Rest Site, 1.

289. This surname might be Lawd, Land, Laud, Loud, Lowd or something similar.

National Park Service 77

transactions were more instances of post-Civil War

purchases by buyers from the north.

290

In January 1875, Jacob D. and Josephine Mitchell

sold the property to Margaret Rideout. Six years

later, in December 1880, Rideout sold the property

to Alex A. Berry of St. Louis for $2,500. The trans-

action was witnessed by G. R. Pitzer, also from St.

Louis. He along with others from St. Louis would

soon purchase property at Eldora. In 1880, the

Berrys mortgaged this property to Hatton Turner,

who filed for foreclosure in 1887. The Berrys had an

orange grove with some 900 trees that were at least

eight years old, and their financial problems may

have been a result of losses in the dreadful freeze of

1886.

291

The Florida citrus industry had reached “boom pro-

portions” by the middle of the 1870s, but a severe,

four-day freeze struck the state January 9-13, 1886,

and was a disaster for the Florida citrus industry.

Although the Indian River area usually enjoyed

warmer temperatures than many other citrus-pro-

ducing areas, temperatures plunged so low that this

area was damaged as well. Even much farther south,

on the Manatee River, temperatures of 25 degrees

and frozen river margins were reported.

292

Hatton Turner purchased the Berrys’ property at

auction at the Duval County Courthouse in May

1888. Turner claimed to be “of Jacksonville” at the

time. An unusually descriptive deed described the

property as containing “a 9-room dwelling, barns,

outhouses, fronting on main lagoon, 15 feet ele-

vation, all nicely fenced, cedar posts and smooth

pickets,” all in addition to the 900-tree orange grove.

Various construction dates are attributed to the

main house. Traditionally, the main house is thought

to have been constructed by J. D. Mitchell in 1866,

but a history of Oak Hill assigns a construction of

1911 and a newspaper reported a date of 1898,

during the Turners’ ownership. However, a historic

structure report that was completed by the Park

Service in 2001 documents that the house was con-

structed prior to 1888.

The house’s location, atop the shell mound, is also

an important siting characteristic. The 1888 fore-

closure deed mentions the property’s relatively high

elevation, an uncommon inclusion in the legal

descriptions of the time. This exception implies the

noteworthiness and desirability of the elevation of

the house in the low and flat Florida terrain. While

the house itself is today considered intrusive upon

the integrity of the prehistoric mound, the existence

of the house may have prevented the mound from

being destroyed by mining for road-paving materials

or for use by the railroads, which was the fate of

many other shell mounds. The construction of the

house on the existing Native American mound

underscores the fact that some habitation sites (on

water, close to abundant seafood sources) have

remained appealing through the millennia.

In 1892, the map of Tax Assessor’s Subdivision of

old Government Lot 3 showed Hatton Turner as the

owner of Lot 2, 3 and 10 of the subdivision. During

Turnor’s ownership, it appears that several notable

changes were made to the main house: the structure

was moved southwest from its original location, a

single-story kitchen with an underlying brick cistern

was added, a bay window was installed in the living

room, three dormers were added to the roof, and

the attic was finished. It was probably during this

period as well that significant modifications were

made to the floor plan, reducing it from the nine

rooms mentioned during the Berry occupancy to

the seven that can be seen today.

293

Interviews with local residents refer to Christopher

Hatton Turner and his wife, Sarah Marie Talbot Car-

penter Turner, as Lord and Lady Turner. The 1911

deeds in which the Turners conveyed the property

to W. H. Snyder of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, con-

tained no honorifics nor made any reference to

nobility or peerage for the Turners; but by 1911, the

Turners had apparently moved to Panton Hall,

Wragby, Lincolnshire in England. They signed the

290. Miscellaneous Book A, pages 330, 332, 328 and 329, Volusia County public records.

291. Deed Book G, page 247; Deed Book 7, page 298, Volusia County public records.

292. John A. Attaway, A History of Florida Citrus Freezes (Lake Alfred, Fla.: Florida Science Source, Inc., 1997), 22-27.

293. Seminole Rest Historic Structure Report, 52.

FIGURE 27. View of Caretaker’s House at

Seminole Rest, ca. 1911. (CANA Collection)

78 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

deeds in London and then sent the documents for

verification to the U.S. Consulate-General.

294

The house was already vacant when the Snyders

purchased it. Snyder family members interviewed

by National Park Service personnel in 1992 stated

that they thought that “Lord Turner” had moved the

lower part of the house to its present location from a

site “down the river,” then added a second story.

Examination of the foundation during completion

of the Historic Structure Report revealed marks on

the sills that confirm that at one point the house had

been moved.

295

Wesley Snyder made only limited

modifications to the house, mainly the addition of a

wrap-around porch. After his death in 1928, a more

ad hoc approach was taken and additional rooms

were attached to both stories on the west side of the

house.

296

The Snyders spent alternating Christmases at the

house and one year remained until the end of the

school year, with their children attending school in

New Smyrna. Jacqueline Snyder Stevens reported

that the Snyders named the site Seminole Rest for

no other reason than they simply liked the sound of

the name. She also noted that her father, Wesley

Snyder, appreciated the beauty of the site and

refused to destroy the mound for road fill, although

some of the northern portion of the mound was

mined.

297

The property remained under the own-

ership of Snyder’s descendants until 1988, when

The Nature Conservancy acquired the property for

subsequent conveyance to the U.S. Government.

298

The other house located on the Seminole Rest site,

the so-called Caretaker’s House, is a unique story in

itself. It too has been determined to have been con-

structed prior to 1888 and is a rare example of

Carpenter Gothic architecture. Only 74 such struc-

tures are listed in the files of the Florida SHPO, with

the vast majority occurring in cities rather than a

rural setting like Oak Hill. The pattern was featured

in publications, including an 1871 issue of Atwood’s

Country and Suburban Houses and 1880 edition of

Specimen Book of 100 Architectural Designs.

299

It is

possible that it was the “9-room dwelling” referred

to in the deed when Turner purchased the property

in 1888.

300

Originally a simple T-shaped structure

with board and batten siding and wood shingles,

Turner added a wrap-around porch on the east and

south sides to adapt to Florida’s climate. This

altered the original design and changed the overall

lines of the structure from vertical to horizontal.

During later Snyder family ownership, a number of

alternations were made, including the addition of a

shed, porch and bathroom.

301

These were removed

during recent renovation of the structure by the

National Park Service.

Associated Properties

The associated properties for the Population Influx

after Wars context are the structures and landscape

features at the waterfront retreat of Eldora on the

east bank of Mosquito Lagoon, which have con-

struction dates ranging from as early as the 1890s to

the mid-twentieth century, and two late-nineteenth-

century buildings and associated landscape features

at Seminole Rest, on the west side of Mosquito

Lagoon.

Eldora

Mouton-Wells House (Eldora State House). Facing

west to Mosquito Lagoon, this house is open to the

public and contains exhibits on the former com-

munity of Eldora and the House of Refuge. The

house is 2½-story and wood-framed, 38 feet wide by

40 feet deep in a T-shaped plan.

The house is set on red-brick piers. In the recent

restoration, the pier bricks were painted gray to

mimic a missing stucco finish. Except on the west,

the spaces between the piers are filled with

diamond-pattern lattice. There is a single-shoul-

dered chimney on the south elevation.

The main block of the house has a side-gabled

gambrel roof with returns at the gable ends and fish-

scale-patterned asphalt shingles. Shed-roofed

294. Map Book 3, page 92; Deed Book 56, pages 189 and 249, Volusia County public records. By this time, the formulaic

language, “Ten Dollars and other valuable considerations” has come into use as the “stated” purchase price rather than

a specific amount as in earlier deeds. This practice continues today. A search of pertinent census records for Jacksonville

did not disclose the name of Hatton Turner.

295. Ibid., 52.

296. Ibid., 56.

297. Interview of Mrs. Jacqueline Snyder Stevens and Mrs. Marian Porta, August 27, 1992, by National Park Service personnel,.

typescript transcription at Seashore office. Mrs. Porta stayed in the house in 1971 while her husband was on a tour of

duty in Viet Nam.

298. Official Records Book 3102, pages 1396 and 1398, Volusia County public records.

299. Seminole Rest Historic Structure Report, 8, 177.

300. Ibid., 40.

301. Ibid., 76, 81.

National Park Service 79

dormers extend most of the width of the roof at the

front and rear, and the roof is surmounted by a rect-

angular, side-gabled cupola. The wing to the rear

(east) has a simple end-gabled roof featuring shed-

roofed wall dormers on the north and south.

The house is clad in horizontal weatherboarding

and features an open front porch that wraps around

the south elevation of the main block. The porch has

Tuscan columns, a modern square-picket balus-

trade, and a wooden handicapped ramp adjoining

the porch on the south. The ceiling of the porch is

beaded tongue-and-groove boards. There is a small,

open porch at the east end of the rear wing.

Windows have 1/1 double-hung sash, except in the

cupola where single-light sliding sash are used. The

windows on the west and north sides are paired;

elsewhere they are mostly single. The front door

incorporates a single pane of glass above side-by-

side panels and is flanked by single sidelights that

extend about 60% of the height of the door with

single panels below.

The interior walls are wallboard, painted white, with

stained and varnished oak trim and oak flooring in

uniform, 4” widths. Doors are five-panel, some var-

nished and some painted. Wood baseboards are

fairly deep with a beveled top, and there is a narrow

crown molding. The main room, at the southwest

side of the first floor, has a fireplace of large coquina

stone with beaded mortar joints. The stair hall is

behind the main room and contains a short flight

down to an outside door on the south and the stair

to the second floor, which is in two flights, running

north-south. Square newel posts and slender turned

balusters are painted white. Treads and risers, rail

and bun-shaped finials on the newel posts are

stained and varnished oak.

A narrow stair in a closet leads to the attic from the

second story. The attic rafters are exposed. A

ladder-type stair, which has a newel post, balusters,

and rail like those of the main staircase, leads to the

cupola. The lower walls of the cupola’s interior are

clad in beaded tongue-and-groove boards.

Pylon: Northeast of the State House stands a con-

crete pylon 5 feet in height, with horizontal form

marks visible in the concrete, and four metal bolts

protruding. The bolts offer no indication of what

surmounted the pylon.

Cisterns: The Eldora guest book for April 1, 1910,

mentions the building of a new cistern, and Williams

Warnock’s sales tract mentions a cement cistern at

the residence in the grove. The remains of three cis-

terns are located in the vicinity of the Mouton-Wells

House. These and two other cisterns in the vicinity

of the Eldora Hotel site were described in a con-

dition assessment/proposal for repair completed by

the NPS Historic Preservation Training Center

(HPTC) in 2001. In it, the cisterns were assigned

numbers to aid in identification.

302

Cistern #1 is located along the paved walkway south

of the house. Rectangular in shape, the cistern is

constructed of stuccoed brick and measures 12 feet

by 17 feet. The walls are about two feet above grade

and it is uncovered. Carved in the concrete near the

northeast corner is a date and name: “1915 Wm L

Brown.” The cistern walls were re-pointed by NPS

conservators in 2001. CANA has erected a wayside

exhibit by the cistern to interpret its function and

importance as a fresh water source for people living

on a barrier island.

The lower walls for two additional cisterns lie north

of the Mouton-Wells House in a band of overgrown

vegetation. Cistern #2 is located approximately 30

feet from the northwest corner of the house. The

rectangular cistern measures about 17 feet by 14 and

rises about a foot above grade. It was constructed

with concrete tabby, painted or whitewashed. At

present, it lacks a cover and is in an advanced state

of ruin. HPTC recommends managing it as a ruin by

removing vegetation, maintaining a clean perimeter,

creating positive drainage away from the walls, and

excluding visitor traffic.

303

The tabby material used in the construction of

Cistern #2 suggests that it predates Cistern #1. Resi-

dents probably relied first on locally available

materials—whole or broken oyster shells, lime made

from burning oyster shells, sand, and water-to make

the tabby concrete. Later, the residents probably

brought in brick for the south cistern and also the

cistern at the now-demolished Eldora House

(Eldora Hotel).

Cistern #3 lies about 30 feet from the northeast

corner of the Mouton-Wells House and was con-

structed in the same manner as Cistern #2. It

measures about 16 feet by 14 feet with walls rising

about 3 feet above grade.

302. National Park Service, Scoping Trip Report, Proposal and Cost Estimate for Technical and Craft Assistance, for the

Stabilization/Repair of Eldora Water Cisterns, Canaveral National Seashore.

303. Ibid., 2.

80 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

A few citrus trees still grow in the woods east of the

State House, a reminder of the groves that once

thrived there.

Cisterns Associated with Demolished Eldora House

(Eldora Hotel).

The "1984 Determination of Eligi-

bility for the Eldora Historic District" mentioned

two cisterns associated with the Eldora House

—

one on the north, one on the south—but it only

included a photograph of the Eldora House's north

cistern. Like the State House's southern cistern, this

water catchment was constructed of red brick, faced

with concrete on both the inside and outside. The

cistern is the only one to have retained its wooden

upper walls and gabled roof, which were replaced in

2005 to help interpret how residents along the

barrier island obtained fresh water. Great care was

taken to match the structural elements of the

original materials.

The ruins of another cistern associated with the

Eldora House (Cistern #4) lie immediately

northeast of the rear of the Eldora House site. Con-

structed with poured tabby with a cementitious

parging, the cistern is rectangular, approximately 23

feet by 11 feet with the walls originally rising about a

foot above grade. HPTC recommended managing it

as a ruin.

304

Schultz-Leeper House. This is a two-story, wood-

framed bungalow set on brick and concrete piers

was built as a single-family residence about 1926. It

has a side-gabled roof, an incised full-width front

porch, a small back porch, and three-bay, shed-

roofed dormers at the front and back. Both porches

were enclosed at one point, but the front porch has

been restored, and the unusual round, tapered

columns are once again visible. There is an external,

brick chimney at the southern end of the house. The

first floor, which contains approximately 865 square

feet, has a living room, dining room, kitchen, and

pantry. The second floor has two bedrooms and a

bathroom, totaling about 655 square feet. The house

was rehabilitated in 2002.

A contemporaneous garage is located east of the

house and measures approximately 17½ feet by 31½

feet. It is also wood-framed with lapped siding on

the exterior and tongue-and-groove boards

sheathing the interior.

Other buildings over 50 years old. Tw o o l d s t r u c -

tures were removed due to their deteriorated

condition. The so-called Honey Shack, located on

the “Wenzell property”, was a small (517 square feet

of living space), one-story wood structure, esti-

mated to be over 100 years old. Margaret Wenzel,

Eldora’s last permanent resident, lived in the

building until the early 1990’s. Born in Eldora in

1912, Ms. Wenzel spent her lifetime at Eldora

except for a few years when she lived in New

Smyrna Beach to attend school.

The Walsh House, which stood a few yards away,

was a two-story, wood-framed structure set on

wood and block piers, probably built in the 1890s.

It, too, has been removed.

Buildings less than 50 years old. Several seasonal

houses and mobile homes, built or installed pri-

marily in the 1960s, were removed by the park as

they became vacant. A few still remain. The Haynes

Residence is a small house trailer with an added

Florida room, a dock, and a small dock house. Mr.

Haynes stated that the trailer was located on its site

in 1956, with the Florida room added in 1968. The

trailer and dock were rehabilitated in 2003 for use

by Daytona Beach Community College and later for

Seashore administrative purposes.

The Feller Residence is a wood-framed house with

screened porch and attached garage built around

1975. It is currently being used as a research facility,

with the garage converted into a laboratory.

Seminole Rest (at Snyder’s Mound)

Seminole Rest Main House (IDLCS # 091894). The

main house is a two-story, wood-framed house set

on brick piers and measuring 60 feet wide by 43 feet

deep. The main block is rectangular, with a small

one-room addition at the rear of the first floor. The

end-gabled roof, which is covered with cypress

shingles, has two shed-roofed dormers facing front

and one at the rear. There is a brick ridge-line

chimney (with a saw-toothed course just below the

cap). The second floor is clad with fish-scale

shingles, while the first floor has board-and-batten

siding. A shed-roofed porch, screened on the north

side, wraps around the first floor. Remnants of a

designed landscape, including magnolia and citrus

trees, are present. The house is yellow, the only

color that Jacqueline Stevens recalls it being painted

while the Snyder family owned it.

305

Seminole Rest Caretaker’s House (IDLCS #091895).

The caretaker’s house is a two-story, side-gabled,

wood-framed house set on brick piers. Measuring

34 feet by 38 feet, it features a front-facing gabled

projection (right) as well as a gabled dormer (left)

304. Ibid., 2-3.

305. Interview with Mrs. Jacqueline Snyder Stevens and Mrs. Marian Porta, August 27, 1992.

National Park Service 81

and a rear cross gable. The gable ends have deeply

projecting eaves and decoratively sawn barge

boards. The original wood-shingle roofing has been

restored, and the asbestos siding was removed to

show the original board-and-batten siding. The

house has three bays across the façade at the first

floor. A shallow projecting bay is present at the first

floor on the southwest elevation. A shed-roofed

porch, sheathed in siding to waist level, wraps

around the front and southwest side. Fenestration is

varied, with some 2/2 (horizontally arranged panes)

and some 6/6. Foundations are brick piers.

Both the main house and caretaker’s house have

been rehabilitated from the ground up including

removal of non-historic features; stabilization and

addition of foundation support pier; replacement of

damaged floor and roof-support timbers; recon-

struction of the main house kitchen into an AV

room; installation of new double-hung windows

and doors (plus shutters on the main house); instal-

lation of complete HVAC, electrical (including new

interior and exterior lighting), fire alarm and fire

suppression systems (plus plumbing in the main

house); addition of telephone and data-line service;

complete replacement of porches on both houses;

complete replacement of cypress wood shingle

roofs for both houses; repainting exterior and

interior surfaces with colors reflecting historical

records; and sanding and resealing all interior

wooden floors.

306

To support the maintenance of the structures at

Seminole Rest, a small maintenance garage was also

constructed north east of the Caretaker House. An

ADA-approved enclosed chair lift has been con-

structed on the northwest side of the main house to

provide accessibility.

307

A visitor contact station has

been established on the first floor of the main house

to interpret the St John’s I period (500 BCE – 800

CE) shell midden on which the house sits and turn

of the century era (1890 – 1920) in which the house

was first constructed. The caretaker’s house is being

used as a first-aid station and office to support

ranger and maintenance operations.

Seminole Rest Cistern . There are the remains of

an apparent brick cistern between the main house

and Caretaker’s house. The roof and wooden side-

walls that probably covered it are gone. The brick

walls measure approximately six feet by six feet. It is

not mentioned in the National Register nomination

for Seminole Rest.

Registration Requirement/Criteria

Considerations/Integrity

The associated properties for the context of Popu-

lation Influx after Wars have undergone recent

scrutiny for listing on the National Register of His-

toric Places or are in the process of such an

assessment. The structures at Seminole Rest were

added to the National Register in 1997. The Eldora

State House (Moulton-Wells House) and associated

structures were entered in the National Register on

November 21, 2001. Thus, the documentation for

registration and criteria for listing meet current

standards and these resources should need no addi-

tional assessment at this time. The Schultz House

was nominated in 2002 under Criterion A (notable

event) and C (architecture). After several reviews,

the SHPO recommended in 2006 that the Seashore

resubmit the nomination under Criterion C only.

306. Personal communication. Bruce Rosel, CANA South District Maintenance Supervisor to John Stiner, October 16, 2007.

307. Ibid.

82 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

National Park Service 83

Chapter Six: The Aerospace

Program, 1950 to 1975

World War II turned Florida into a giant military

installation. Ranging from mega complexes to small

facilities, 172 military installations dotted the state

during the war, drawn in part by the state’s mild

climate which allowed year-round training. The

largest facility was Camp Blanding at Starke, west of

Jacksonville, which became Florida’s “fourth largest

city” during the war.

308

America’s military

expansion began in the late 1930s as Germany’s

rearmament and Japan’s aggression in China caused

increasing concern among U.S. leaders. The site for

Banana River Naval Air Station, which was to

become the nucleus of the Cape Canaveral aero-

space development, was selected in June 1939. The

Navy formally commissioned the station on

October 1, 1940.

309

During World War II, one of the tasks of the Banana

River Station personnel was to patrol the Atlantic

coast for possible German submarine activity. In the

war’s early years, German submarines roamed

widely but the waters near the Florida coast were

especially desirable hunting grounds. The configu-

ration of Cape Canaveral is such that there is deep

water very close to the shore, allowing ships to sail

close to the beach and at the same time allowing sub

commanders to sight their targets easily against the

shoreline. With the increased demand for Texas oil

needed to run the industrial factories in the

northeast U.S., much of that necessary fuel was

transported from the Gulf coast through the Florida

straits and up the east coast to New Jersey. From the

Banana River station one could at times see the war

close hand as flames from American and other ships

torpedoed by German submarines lit the night sky

over the Atlantic.

310

Other naval air stations were built in Jacksonville,

Daytona Beach, and Sanford. Naval Air Station

Daytona constructed two practice targets on Mos-

quito Lagoon, within the present boundaries of the

Seashore. These were bombing target “Tokyo,”

which was a ring of palmetto log pilings driven into

the bottom of the lagoon, and strafing target

“Nagoya,” an airplane fuselage filled with concrete.

Local residents have told of collecting spent shell

cases at the strafing target and selling them for

scrap. Both targets were abandoned by the Navy at

war’s end; archeological remains of both were still

visible as late as 2007.

311

Remnants of the strafing

target, a boulder size chunk of the concrete with

attached bits of metal from the fuselage, is a

landmark to local residents known as Target Rock.

Numerous wildfires resulted from the bombing

activity, with one fire in 1940 or 1941 burning the

entire length of the future Seashore’s barrier island

from New Smyrna Beach to the Cape

(Canaveral).

312

With the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945, the

United States emerged from World War II with a

new enemy—its former wartime ally, the Soviet

Union. Each nation moved quickly to test and

further develop technologies, such as jet aircraft

and ballistic missiles, that had emerged as a result of

the war. One of the major manifestations of the

ideological and territorial contest between these

two nations and their own allies was the race for

preeminence in nuclear weapons and their delivery

308. Gannon, ed., History of Florida, 323-24.

309. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2:72; John H. Montgomery, “History of Naval Air Station Banana River, 1940 –1948,”

undated [1948?] typescript available at North Brevard Public Library.

310. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2,82-84; interview with Edgar Burts, Orange County History Center, Orlando, Florida:

World War II exhibit.

311.

Memorandum, CANA Resource Management Specialist to File, February 15, 1995, copy available in Canaveral National

Seashore files.

312. Davison and Bratton, Vegetation History of Canaveral National Seashore, 48.

84 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

systems of unmanned rocket-powered missiles.

Both superpowers sought the best strategic systems

that could deliver an atomic bomb across the inter-

continental distances that separated them.

313

In the 1930s, German scientists Dr. Werhner von

Braun, Dr. Kurt Debus, and their colleagues began

development of the world’s first ballistic missile

capable of delivering explosive warheads to distant

targets. This missile evolved into the V-2 rocket,

some 3,000 of which the Germans launched at Great

Britain in 1944. After the war, von Braun, Debus and

a number of other German scientists were brought

to the United States, in hopes of applying their

knowledge to more peaceful projects. They fired a

modified German V-2 rocket from the White Sands

Proving Ground in New Mexico in April 1946, but

with rockets falling dangerously close to Juarez,

Mexico, the U.S. government began looking for a

much larger proving ground that could accom-

modate continued experiments and provide for

expansion as longer-range missiles were

developed.

314

Land for the U.S. Space

Program

In 1947, Cape Canaveral was chosen from four

potential locations as the U.S.’s long-range missile-

launching facility. The Navy transferred Naval Air

Station Banana River to the Air Force in 1948, and

the following year it was officially established as a

joint long-range proving ground (LRPG). Rivalries

among the services proved unmanageable, and the

LRPG was soon under the sole management of the

Air Force.

Cape Canaveral seemed ideal for the missile site,

jutting into the ocean as it did, since it allowed

launches over water away from populated areas.

Construction of the first missile launch pads began

in 1950, and the first missile, a German V-2 rocket

with an Army “WAC Corporal” rocket as the second

stage, was launched from the Cape on July 24, 1950.

The LRPG was renamed Patrick Air Force Base in

August 1950, in recognition of Major General

Mason M. Patrick (1863-1942), chief of the nation’s

Air Service during World War I.

315

The initial development of the launch facilities at

Cape Canaveral was primarily driven by military

interests, but that began to change in the 1950s,

especially after the Soviets’ successful launch of the

Sputnik I satellite in October 1957, beating the

Americans into space. In 1961, President John

Kennedy announced the goal of putting an

American on the moon before the end of the

decade. The powerful rockets that would be nec-

essary created safety concerns due to lack of space

at the Canaveral launch facility. The National Aero-

nautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the

Air Force had to determine the best site for the

launches, yet make recommendations and subse-

quent decisions before the specifics of the launch

equipment itself were decided.

316

Cumberland

Island in south Georgia offered some of the natural

benefits of Cape Canaveral and the benefit of lower

land prices. Remoteness offered advantage for

safety, but that very remoteness caused problems in

serving a population surge.

The area around Canaveral had barely kept up with

facilities and services needed by Cape employees

and their families, but the Cape already anchored

the series of tracking stations stretching almost

6,000 miles that made up the Atlantic Missile Range.

In addition, there was room for expansion of the

space facilities onto agricultural Merritt Island. The

Air Force concluded that the price of land near the

313. Roger E. Bilstein, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915-1990 (Washington, D.C.: National

Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1989), 42-44.

314. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2, 101.

FIGURE 28. Launch of the Bumper V-2, the

first missile launched at Cape Canaveral, July

24, 1950. (NASA)

315. Mark C. Cleary, The 6555

: Missile and Space Launches Through 1970, U.S. Air Force, 45

Space Wing History Office,

1991, on-line version consulted at <www.patrick.af.mil/heritage>, on August 31, 2006.

316. Charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty, Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations

(Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1978), 87.

National Park Service 85

cape was expensive but that the area of Titusville-

Cocoa-Melbourne also had become a dynamic area

in conjunction with the Cape’s development. A

report called the local population “missile-ori-

ented” and asserted that the residents were

accustomed to the idea of missile launches and

unlikely to protest the dangers, which might be

expected from people in other uninitiated areas.

On August 24, 1961, NASA Headquarters

announced plans to acquire 324 square kilometers

(about 88,000 acres) north and west of the Cape

Canaveral launch area, largely on Merritt Island.

One of Merritt Island’s assets was a history of being

relatively hurricane free, a special concern of the

NASA Launch Operations Director, Dr. Kurt

Debus.

317

Interagency misunderstandings between the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a

Federal civilian agency, and the Air Force and

Department of Defense over responsibilities at the

facility were debated in committee meetings and in

Congress. Air Force administrators generally saw

the expansion of the launch activities as an

expansion of their Air Force facility at the Cape, but

the Air Force did not have the funds to purchase

property on Merritt Island so NASA would have to

do so. Events moved rapidly with NASA requesting

the funds from Congress on September 1 and three

weeks later asking the Army Corps of Engineers to

supervise the land purchases.

318

The Jacksonville District of the Corps opened a field

office in Titusville. The target land was composed of

440 tracts with three-fourths of them in the pos-

session of absentee owners, three-fifths of them

outside of Florida. Included were several thousand

acres of productive citrus groves, several small com-

munities and some large-scale developments then in

progress. Eminent-domain condemnation pro-

ceedings were begun against owners dissatisfied

with government offers. The absentee owners of

some larger parcels were able to negotiate better

deals than those who were living on their land and

needed to find other places to live.

319

In February 1962 the Titusville Star-Advocate pro-

tested the “high-pressure tactics” used on some

property owners and urged the owners not to

succumb. There were several protest meetings and a

group of residents wrote President Kennedy that

they were being mistreated. Many who were relo-

cated for the project remained bitter. Arthur

Campbell, who was relocated from Clifton, declined

an invitation to visit in 1981, saying “sadly that he

did not want to return.” Others displaced by the

space program related their continued bitterness

over the taking of the land when interviewed by Kit

Davison in 1984 and 1985. The Titusville newspaper

remarked wistfully in 1983 that “today there is no

trace of Allenhurst, Clifton or Shiloh,” three com-

munities obliterated for the space center.

320

In 1964, after the Federal purchases, the Indian

River Citrus League pondered purchasing the house

at Dummett Grove known as Castle di Castellucio

or Dummett Castle. The league cited the heritage of

the grove itself as the pioneer in the Indian River

Citrus industry, although the “castle” post-dated the

Dummett family’s ownership of the property and

was built in 1881 by the purported Duke of Castel-

lucio and his wife, an heiress to the Anheuser-Busch

fortune. The original $20,000 asking price had been

reduced to $1,200 by the time Brevard County

became owner of the house, which had to be relo-

cated from Merritt Island. The Titusville City

Council assisted in the relocation, but the house

proved too large to transport across the Titusville

bridge and ultimately burned while a solution was

being sought for the dilemma.

321

The development of the Titan III rocket created

additional concerns because of its great power and

the toxicity of its fuels that brought about closing of

several of the launch areas during testing along with

the possibility of corrosion of other equipment and

a flight pattern that would imperil other areas of the

space center in the event of rocket failure. As a

result, administrators looked to acquiring even

more land on Merritt Island, north of Haulover

Canal. While NASA and the Department of Defense

jockeyed for ownership of new lands and the right

to control the entire facility, some in Congress held

that this was “national” land and that the agencies

were territorially bickering. NASA’s 1963 authori-

zation included funds to purchase 60 square

317. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2:168. Arthur Campbell would probably have disagreed about “hurricane free.” A

long-time Clifton resident, he reported that the September 1926 hurricane lifted a house off its foundations and blew

oranges off the trees. “Big Hurricane of 1926 Blew Oranges Off Trees,” Star Advocate, February 23, 1983, copy in

Canaveral National Seashore research files).

318. Benson and Faherty, Moonport, 80-101.

319. Shofner, History of Brevard County, 2:169.

320. “Big Hurricane of 1926 Blew Oranges Off Trees;” Kit Davison, interviews about fires, September 1984 - February 1985,

typescript copies in Canaveral National Seashore research files.

321. Titusville Star-Advocate, June 6, June 28, August 10, 1964.

86 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

kilometers (about 16,000 acres) at the northern

limits of the launch area.

Handling 12 square kilometers (more than 3,000

acres) of citrus trees became one of the most con-

tentious issues of the land acquisition. Citrus

growers on Merritt Island were willing to vacate

dwellings and farm the groves in absentia, but

wished to retain title to the land. They wanted to be

able to return to their groves if NASA decided it did

not need the property in the future. Citrus growers

involved Florida Senator Spessard Holland to

intervene when they got no satisfaction from NASA.

This resulted in options to renew as well as longer

leases than NASA had originally wished to give.

Between fall 1961 and spring 1964, the Corps of

Engineers acquired the bulk of the land needed

from approximately 1,500 property owners. There

had been extensive negotiations and some litigation,

which resulted in some bad feelings and the eventual

expenditure of about $72,000,000 before the land

acquisition was complete.

The space agency finally took 340 square kilometers

by purchase and negotiated with the State of Florida

for the use of an additional 225 square kilometers of

submerged land, much of which lay within Mos-

quito Lagoon. NASA invited Brevard County to

maintain a public beach north of the launch facil-

ities, which could be used when aerospace activities

did not create a hazard. In 1963, NASA empowered

the National Wildlife Service to administer those

areas, about 230 square kilometers, not immediately

involved with launch activities as the Merritt Island

National Wildlife Refuge. This wildlife belt formed a

safety zone between the launch area and the popu-

lation areas. A subsequent agreement in 1972

empowered the refuge to oversee citrus groves,

lease fishing camps, and operate Playalinda Beach at

the north end of the Cape and to cooperate with the

Brevard County Mosquito District. Thus NASA

maintained the ability to make use of the lands when

deemed necessary and could terminate the

agreement if the needs of the space program

demanded.

The Apollo program placed severe strains on the

larger Cape community. Social and economic

resources were stretched thin and took a heavy toll

on family life, as the divorce rates of the time

indicate. But the teamwork between government

agencies, industry and universities was remarkable,

and this cooperation is the “most impressive legacy

of the Apollo launch program.”

322

Canaveral National

Seashore

On January 3, 1975, Canaveral National Seashore

was created by an act of Congress. The enabling leg-

islation empowered the Secretary of the Interior to

close lands to the public at the request of the admin-

istrator of NASA when necessary for space

operations. Vehicular traffic on the Seashore’s

beaches was prohibited except for administrative

purposes.

323

A large segment of the Park (34,345

acres) was overlaid on land incorporated into

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1963. In

this area, FWS continues to be responsible for

natural resource management and NPS has

assumed management of cultural resources. The

NPS was given responsibility for visitor services

along the beach. North of the NASA property,

approximately 16,000 additional acres of state and

county lands were donated to the Seashore,

including the former 730-acre Apollo State Park

(containing Turtle Mound and Castle Windy

Midden). Finally, 813 acres of private lands were

purchased to complete acquisition of property

within the Seashore boundary. Owners were given

the option to sell outright or to sign a lease for 25

years or for life. Eighteen owners decided to sign

long-term leases, the last of which expired in

2005.

324

Most of the associated structures were

removed, while a small number were retained for

administrative purposes.

Local residents continued to display an interest in

the lands that were now under Federal ownership.

Many felt deprived of parts of their local historic

heritage as lands were closed to the public, and the

National Park Service may have been a legatee of the

contentions bred by the original land acquisitions by

the space agencies.

Congressman Bill Chappell sponsored Federal legis-

lation in 1988 to purchase “Seminole Rest,” which

was also known as Snyder Mound, and to expand

the Seashore’s boundary to include the site which is

on the west bank of Mosquito Lagoon at Oak Hill.

Congress passed the boundary change, but the bill

to appropriate the funds was derailed by Chappell’s

defeat in that year’s general election. The Nature

322. Benson and Faherty, Moonport, 529-30.

323. Public Law 93-626.

324. National Park Service, General Management Plan, 19; Stiner, 20.

National Park Service 87

Conservancy stepped in and, with its ability to

acquire lands without the complexities involved in

government authorizations and procedures,

acquired the property in 1988. Two years later, they

transferred the 25-acre site to the care of Canaveral

National Seashore, giving the Seashore a new

northern limit to its holdings on the west bank of

the Lagoon.

325

Another group interested in the Seashore, the

Friends of Canaveral, incorporated in 1989 and

campaigned successfully to receive historic preser-

vation grants-in-aid funds from the State of Florida

to stabilize the “State House” (Mouton-Wells

House) at Eldora. The group then expanded its

focus to include the “Eldora House” Hotel, but

National Park Service professionals concluded that

the original building materials had so deteriorated

that wholesale replacement of historic fabric would

be required. Replacement on that scale would have

resulted in a reconstructed, not a restored, building,

and the Park Service declined to undertake the

project.

326

The deteriorated Eldora House was

razed in 1992.

Associated Properties

There are no properties within the Seashore asso-

ciated with the Aerospace Program, 1950 to 1975,

context. Historic resources under NASA ownership

have been listed on the National Register of Historic

Places and made National Historic Landmarks.

325. “Balancing Act: Canaveral Faces Its Future,” The Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal. August 10, 1997.

326. The Daily Journal, February 13, 1991.

88 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

National Park Service 89

Chapter Seven:

Recommendations

The following recommendations are made with the

intention of encouraging preservation and

enhancing interpretation of historic and prehistoric

sites located within Canaveral National Seashore.

Recommendations are also made for the acquisition

of additional documents or other evidence relating

to the history of Canaveral National Seashore lands.

Historic and Prehistoric

Resources

Turtle Mound

The Nomination for the National Register of His-

toric Places for Turtle Mound should be expanded

to include its historic role as a navigational marker

and launching site for Native Americans even after

the advent of permanent European settlements, and

to include its recognition by Europeans as the

“boundary” of cultural or linguistic Native

American groups.

André Michaux Historical Marker

A historical marker should be placed in the Sea-

shore to inform visitors of the travels of André

Michaux through the Seashore area in late March

and early April, 1788. Michaux was an interna-

tionally known botanist who collected plants in the

Seashore as part of an 11-year trek through North

America. Michaux has been credited with contrib-

uting the most to the beauty of the gardens in the

area of Charleston, South Carolina. He visited the

Seashore’s most noticeable sites, Turtle Mound and

Old Haulover Canal. The marker text should relate

to his journey through the area now making up the

Seashore and his observations. Michaux com-

mented on the saw palmettos growing in the

Seashore, and their proliferation within the Sea-

shore offers many sites where a marker could be

located near a the type of specimens noted by

Michaux.

Escaped Slave Route

The Seashore should erect a marker in a prominent

place to interpret the likelihood that Seashore lands

served as part of the escape route for enslaved

persons fleeing bondage in Spanish St. Augustine

circa 1603 to seek refuge among Native Americans.

Much is made of the arrival of the first enslaved

Africans in the Virginia colony in 1619, but slavery

(as well as attempts to be free from it) was well

established in Spanish Florida well before that date.

This event may be among the earliest recorded slave

escapes to occur in today’s United States.

Because the exact route taken by escaped slaves is

not known at this time and might very well never be

known with certainty, it is recommended that a

prominent location for the marker would suffice for

public awareness. It is also recommended that the

Seashore work with the NPS Underground Railroad

Network to Freedom initiative to promote

awareness of the 1603 events in the area of the Sea-

shore and explore modes of commemorating them

and incorporating them into the initiative’s broader

interpretive programs. Fort Mosé National Historic

Landmark north of St. Augustine is already

included on the Underground Railroad Travel Itin-

erary. The Seashore’s role as a haven for escaped

slaves predates the 1738 establishment of Fort Mosé

by 135 years. Long before Spanish Florida became a

destination for slaves fleeing from British colonies

farther north, more remote parts of Florida like the

Seashore provided shelter for slaves of the Spanish.

Elliott Plantation and Sugar Mill

Ruins

Exciting research by Dr. Daniel Shafer, formerly of

the University of North Florida, in documents

housed in the Royal Archives of London has

revealed new information on the Elliott plantation.

Recent field trips to the sugar mill ruin and Ross

Hammock (eastern portion of the Elliott plantation)

have revealed the remains of additional period

90 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

structures. Joint meetings have been held by the

above parties, plus the Seashore, Refuge, NASA and

NPS Southeast Archeological Center, to establish

coordinated research priorities and funding strat-

egies for more in-depth archeological work at the

plantation and sugar mill ruins.

A Phase 1 archeological survey was conducted in

August 2008 to confirm the time period of the ruins

and delineate the boundary of the plantation site.

Numerous artifacts dating to the colonial period

were discovered at both the sugar mill ruins and

Ross Hammock, and major features were mapped.

More in-depth investigation is needed. The Sea-

shore should continue to support, encourage, and

facilitate these cooperative efforts.

Kings Road

The Seashore is fortunate to have Dot Moore of the

Florida Anthropological Society and Roz Foster of

the North Brevard Heritage Foundation docu-

menting the southernmost section of the Kings

Road from New Smyrna to Elliott’s plantation at

Stobbs Farm (Ross Hammock). The Seashore

should encourage efforts to add this portion of the

roadway to the pending National Register of His-

toric Places nomination submitted in 2004 for other

parts of the roadway in Volusia County.

Old Haulover Portage and Canal

This site has served an important role as a portage

between Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River since

prehistoric times. Documents from the seventeenth

and eighteenth century note the importance of the

“haulover” to inland transportation and communi-

cation. In the early period following European

contact, Haulover and Turtle Mound were the only

two features in this area that were depicted on most

maps. During the Indian Removal conflicts (1835-

1842), the Haulover was also an important supply

route for the U.S. Army. A historical marker was

erected in 2007 to interpret the Haulover’s strategic

location and long use.

To the extent that it is consistent with protection of

resources and visitor safety, the park should install

interpretive waysides or other exhibits pointing out

the historic role in waterborne transportation and

the development of Florida in the latter part of the

nineteenth century that was played by the canal

built in 1854. The tree and vegetation canopy that

now overhangs the canal should be cut back along at

least a portion of the canal to more nearly resemble

its appearance when in use. Additional clearing,

again as consistent with FWS and NPS resource

management goals, along the edges of the canal and

especially at each terminus would help focus inter-

pretation on the Haulover’s wartime supply role.

Men, tents, and supplies had to be accommodated

in the narrow isthmus between the Indian River and

Mosquito Lagoon. Additionally, there would have

been concerns for cleared vistas to prevent guerilla-

style raiding practiced by the Seminole groups.

Water and waterways are a dominating feature of

the Seashore and interpretation of this site would

serve to point out the long-term use of a natural

feature to accommodate the transportation route

that naturally existed. The Haulover’s long use by

numerous cultures and national groups merits inter-

pretation. The National Register nomination for

Old Haulover should be revised to add information

and to bring the nomination in line with current

standards.

New Haulover Canal

While Old Haulover Canal can claim an unknown

number of centuries as a passage linking Mosquito

Lagoon and the Indian River, New Haulover Canal

is itself more than a century old, having been cut in

1888. Its creation as a modern engineered and main-

tained passage contributed to and continues to

contribute to the viability of the inland waterway

along Florida’s east coast, through which it is linked

to waterway systems far to the north. These

waterway systems permitted vessels to travel inland

and with safety to the southern tip of Florida and

thus the southern tip of the United States mainland.

Thus, New Haulover Canal can claim local, state,

and national significance under Criteria A and C

(see Chapter Four). New Haulover Canal should be

considered for nomination to the National Register

by the Army Corps of Engineers, the responsible

Federal agency. The entire Atlantic Intracoastal

Waterway is likely eligible for the National Register

as a historic transportation corridor, but that recom-

mendation is outside the scope of this study.

Not only does New Haulover Canal represent an

important physical element in the Atlantic Intrac-

oastal Waterway, it also serves as an example of the

engineered environmental alterations of the late

nineteenth century, especially in watery areas of

Florida. The canal also represents the era of trans-

portation improvements in Florida financed by

northern capitalists, who received huge acreage of

Florida lands as incentives to carry out the improve-

ments. The practice of these sorts of land incentives

by the Federal government and the state gov-

ernment in the period after the Civil War

encouraged what evolved into integrated,

nationwide transportation networks.

National Park Service 91

Confederate Salt Works

The site purported to be the Confederate Salt Works

should be investigated by historical architects to try

to ascertain dates or date ranges for the period of

initial construction and any later modifications to

the hearth area. An archeological investigation

should be performed in the area adjacent to the

hearth for sub-surface evidence of a building asso-

ciated with the hearth. Maps and written

documentary evidence (see Chapter Three) suggest

that this site might be associated with a colonial

building. If such evidence is found, the site should

be assessed for National Register potential as a

remnant of a rural colonial building. Few such ves-

tiges of the colonial period survive in Florida

outside of St. Augustine. Archeological testing in

August, 2008 by SEAC revealed British Colonial

Period artifacts at both these sites. A more detailed

report will be forthcoming.

Eldora

The village of Eldora is an example of a settlement

founded following the Civil War that continued in

existence up to the establishment of the Seashore in

the 1970s, albeit with changing uses. The first inhab-

itants, coming from the Midwest, grew citrus and

other crops. The settlement evolved into a retreat

for middle-class northerners and then became more

of a second-home community for residents of

nearby Florida cities and towns. Today, that same

sequence of events—the transition from orange

grove to residential real estate development—con-

tinues to take place in central Florida. Little today

remains on the ground from Eldora’s pre-1920

period. The Mouton-Wells House (Eldora State

House), constructed as early as 1913, and subsidiary

structures have been listed on the National Register

with a period of significance extending from 1910 to

1938.

The Schultz (Leeper) residence dates from around

1926. Other existing structures in the Eldora com-

munity, including the former Fellers House, Haynes

residence, and Heebner garage, date from the

middle 1950s through the 1980s. However, the

Eldora hammock, including the unpaved road trace

leading to the Moulton-Wells House, house

environs, and nearby cisterns offer a rare oppor-

tunity to catch the feeling of tranquil life along a

Florida waterway before the era of rampant devel-

opment. The Seashore should strive to preserve this

atmosphere with limited development and

intrusion. An assessment of the cultural landscape at

the Moulton-Wells House is needed and

recommended.

The site of the Eldora Hotel and associated cisterns

represents the last decades of the nineteenth

century, when visitors reached Eldora in carriages

or by boat. The restored Mouton-Wells House rep-

resents the period of the 1920s and 1930s when the

automobile allowed somewhat easier access to

Eldora. Until the advent of air-conditioning, most of

Florida’s out-of-state tourists were winter tourists

and tourism was a seasonal industry rather than the

year-round enterprise of today.

Seminole Rest

Both the Main House and Caretakers House have

been extensively rehabilitated to resemble their his-

toric appearance (circa 1911), as described in

Chapter Five. The Caretaker’s House is being used

as a first aid station and office to support ranger and

maintenance operations. A visitor contact station

has been established on the first floor of the main

house to interpret the St John’s I period (500 BCE –

800 CE) shell midden and turn of the century life

(1890 – 1920) along a Florida waterway, which the

houses represent. Although they would seem to be

unrelated, the stories of the houses and midden are

intertwined as discussed below. Current displays are

minimal; more extensive permanent displays are

needed and have been applied for. The seashore

plans to expand interpretation of the site, as funding

permits.

Interpretation at Seminole Rest should seek to

emphasize the importance of the Native American

occupation, which after all created the mound’s ele-

vated position. This elevation later was a primary

factor in making this a desirable spot for whites to

build in the late nineteenth century. The 1888 fore-

closure deed mentions the property’s relatively high

elevation, an uncommon inclusion in the legal

descriptions of the time. The inclusion of this infor-

mation implies the noteworthiness and desirability

of the elevation of the house. In the low and flat

Florida terrain, these once-numerous shell mounds

offered higher elevation and thus a superior vantage

point. While the house itself may be considered by

some as intrusive upon the mound, the existence of

the house preserved the mound from being dis-

persed around the countryside as paving for roads

or for use by the railroads, as was the fate of so many

other shell mounds. The continued desirability of

this location, on the water and close to seafood

resources, is worthy of consideration as an inter-

pretive theme. In this way, continuity or

commonality from the native occupation up

through the acquisition of the property the NPS,

rather than conflict between earlier and later uses,

could be emphasized.

92 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Four potentially eligible landscapes were identified

in a 1997 Level 1 inventory by the Southeast

Regional Office: Canaveral National Seashore, Sem-

inole Rest, Eldora Historic District and Haulover

Canal. An assessment of the cultural landscapes at

these sites is needed and recommended.

Documentary Sources and

Research

Early Colonial Intercultural and

Interracial Relationships and

Activities Within the Seashore

It is recommended that documents (for the most

part written in Spanish) from the first Spanish

period be read or perhaps re-read to search for

information that might specifically concern possible

residents, activities, or events that occurred within

the boundary of today’s Seashore during the early

Spanish period. Historian John Hann refers specifi-

cally to Seashore-related events and persons in A

History of the Timucua Indians and Missions (see

Chapter Three of this report). The Seashore,

however, is not the area of primary focus for Hann’s

study and he thus does not elaborate on the Sea-

shore area.

Dr. Hann assesses the affiliations of the Seashore’s

early colonial-era residents in the context of

political and linguistic affiliations that may not

match affiliations based on physical (archeological)

remnants. Further research into the pertinent docu-

ments might help to clarify this analytical

dissonance. This HRS addresses the role of the Sea-

shore area in the very early colonial relationships

and interactions among Europeans, Native Amer-

icans, and Africans—among the earliest such

interactions on territory that would ultimately

become part of the United States. But it is beyond

the scope of this study to perform a thorough search

of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish doc-

uments relating to this topic. Microfilm copies of

potentially informative documents are available in

the United States and in Florida, although many of

the original documents are conserved in Spain,

Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

Elliott Plantation and Sugar Mill

Ruins

Dr. Daniel Shafer, formerly of the University of

North Florida, has been gathering information on

the Elliott and other British period plantations from

documents housed in the Royal Archives of

London. These include over 100 pages of letters

between Elliott and his overseers. Many of the doc-

uments have been damaged by water, treated and

covered with plastic, which provides protection but

makes them difficult to read. The National Park

Service should work with Dr. Schafer, possibly

helping to fund one or more trips to England and

Scotland to continue this vital work. The Volusia

County Historic Preservation Board has pledged

$2,500 towards a trip for Dr. Schafer this Fall.

Kings Road

Construction of the Kings Road is referenced in

eighteenth-century British documents. Nineteenth-

century plat maps depict an old roadway or trail

leading south from New Smyrna to Ross Hammock.

These and additional sources should be assessed to

confirm whether the existing trace within the Sea-

shore is the original route. Significant information

has already been gathered by Dot Moore of the

Florida Anthropological Society.

Daily Life in the Seashore in Late

Nineteenth and Early Twentieth

Centuries

The Park Service should acquire copies of the tape-

recorded interview of Harold Coutant done in 1960

and Harold Coutant’s photographs of daily life at

the Mosquito Lagoon House of Refuge, if these

sources are not already in possession of the Sea-

shore. Coutant’s family lived at the House of Refuge

from 1891 to 1909. The photographs and tape-

recorded interview are conserved at the Historical

Society of Martin County in Stuart, Florida. The

park should continue to search the National

Archives and other institutions possessing infor-

mation on Houses of Refuge and Life Saving Service

to glean additional material on the Mosquito

Lagoon station.

Documents Relating to Live-Oak

Harvesting from the 1820s to the

1850s

The Seashore should contact the keepers of the

business or family records of the Swift family in the

possession of Oliver S. Chute of Milton, Massachu-

setts, to inquire what records relevant to live oaking

within the Seashore might be available. Virginia

Steele Wood cites this family-business documentary

source in her book Live Oaking: Southern Timber

for Tall Ships on page 167.

National Park Service 93

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As the nation’s principal conservation agency,

the Department of the Interior has responsibility

for most of our nationally owned public lands

and natural resources. This includes fostering

sound use of our land and water resources; pro-

tecting our fish, wildlife, and biological diversity;

preserving the environmental and cultural values

of our national parks and historical places; and

providing for the enjoyment of life through

outdoor recreation. The department assesses our

energy and mineral resources and works to

ensure that their development is in the best

interests of all our people by encouraging stew-

ardship and citizen participation in their care.

The department also has a major responsibility

for American Indian reservation communities

and for people who live in island territories

under U.S. administration.

NPS D-65 September 2008