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 investigation 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 Heritage 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 illustrations. 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 information, 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 specialist, 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 separated from the mainland by Indian River.

Canaveral National Seashore was authorized by the 

93rd 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 facilities 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 Seashore, 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 development of beach communities following the war 

prompted the NPS in 1954 to undertake another 

survey to identify “outstanding stretches” of relatively undeveloped coastline in the eastern United 

States. Some 126 areas were examined, with 16 

identified as having the highest priority for acquisition 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.1

Cape Canaveral had been a United States missiletesting site since 1950, and the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration (NASA) began operations 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 seashore. Discussion among the NPS, the Fish and 

Wildlife Service, and NASA ensued, and Congress 

ultimately established Canaveral National Seashore 

in 1975.2

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, averaging 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 Haulover Canal allows boat traffic between the two 

bodies of water. Mosquito Lagoon and its many 

small islands account for two-thirds of the Seashore’s acreage. The lagoon is one of the most 

diverse estuaries on the entire eastern seaboard and 

has been designated by the Environmental Protection 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 protected 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,3 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 subtropical, the area is subject to periodic droughts and 

occasional winter freezes.4

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 adventurers 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 threeand-a-half centuries the area was known as Mos2. 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, discovered 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 Mosquito 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 popularity 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 

Trail.

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 historical and archeological information and will assist 

Seashore personnel in site planning, resource management, 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.”5

This study brings together information about events 

and persons that influenced the history of the Seashore 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 historic structures.6 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 significance 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).7

■ 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 (architecture), 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 historic resources more effective, the information 

about related historic properties is grouped into historic contexts. These contexts establish thematic, 

geographical, and chronological boundaries for specific 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.”8

The area encompassed by Canaveral National Seashore has had a long and varied past. Cultural, 

economic, technological, and social developments 

as well as environmental changes have often overlapped the limits of the political and national eras. 

This study recognizes the broader patterns of development 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 EuroAmerican 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 Seashore 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 EuroAmerican 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 transporting precious metals from the Americas to 

Europe—metals that undergirded European economies. Native Americans in the area of the Seashore 

quickly showed their shrewdness in adapting and 

capitalizing on European enmities and incorporating 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.9 European attempts to 

settle and develop the area were often frustrated by 

the destruction or checks brought about by international rivalries. In the National Park Service’s 

thematic framework, this context is related to the 

themes “Peopling Places,” “Creating Social Institutions 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 introduction 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 transportation 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 followed 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 environmental preserves. In the National Park Service’s 

thematic framework, this context is related to the 

themes “Peopling Places,” “Creating Social Institutions 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 recommendations 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 occupation of Florida, humans, animals, and plants have 

adjusted to changing environmental conditions 

resulting from climatic fluctuations. As the environment changed, many areas experienced larger 

population levels. These people developed new survival 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 habitation and activities in and around the Seashore 

were and remain quite sensitive to any variations in 

water levels.10 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 formation, 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.11

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 supported 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.”12 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 populations, 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 technological adaptations to environmental change were 

sufficiently evident for archeologists to delineate a 

new culture, the early Archaic.13 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 undiscovered, 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 Periodsa

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 technique 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 indicates fired pottery developed just as early in that 

region.14

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 increasingly 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 shellfishand fish-processing sites near harvesting locations.”15 Because sea levels are thought to be as 

much as five feet higher today, the shell middens 

available today for investigation probably were originally 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 consistently maintained a disciplined and respectful 

relationship with their environment.

Sedentation encouraged the development of distinct 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 prehistoric 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.16 Some 

archeologists suggest that the presence of larger sites 

along the upper (southern) St. Johns River basin 

suggests that these locations were central settlements 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 exploitation. The Seminole Rest site may be more 

representative of long-term generalized extractive 

camps or possibly residential base camps.17 The 

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

Johns I (a regional culture) sites.18 Some archeologists 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-fibertempered 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 populations. 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 huntergatherers 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 differentiation of rank or a caste system. Arthritis of the 

elbow was common and may have been caused by 

frequent net casting.19

 The Castle Windy site was occupied during this 

latter period, with evidence indicating a 350-year 

occupation beginning about 1,000 years ago. Investigators concluded that this site was occupied on a 

limited seasonal basis during the winter months.20

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 consumed 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.”21

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 constructed 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 terminate 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 approximates 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 construction in the early twentieth century.

Snyder's Mound, which lies on the shore of Mosquito 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 clamshells 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.22

Fiddle Crab Mound is a much smaller shell-capped 

sand mound, purposefully constructed, approximately 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 associated with Fiddle Crab Mound, which appears to 

have been constructed on an earlier midden. Radiocarbon dating indicates that Fiddle Crab Mound 

and associated middens date between 120-1040 CE. 

Occupation of the site began even earlier, as indicated 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 Surruque 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 vegetation, 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.23 Several distinguished 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.24 Small, unaware of 

Michaux’s visit 133 years earlier, speculated that his 

survey may have been “the first botanical 

excursion” to Turtle Mound.25 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 ovalshaped, 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 vegetation. 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 archeological sites.

Turtle Mound is already listed on the National Register with a state-level of significance under 

Criterion D. The information contained in this historic 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 disturbed in the past, they are mostly intact and 

relatively rare.26

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.27

 A nautical chart made by Alberto Cantino in 1502 

for his Portuguese patron may be the earliest certain 

portrayal of Cape Canaveral. Historical cartographers 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 protrusion 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.28 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 identification 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.29 If this very speculative 

interpretation is accurate, it probably marks the first 

appearance of the mound on maps and gives prominence 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 conquest of two, densely populated, silver-rich 

mainland areas, in Mexico and Peru, and the commencement 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.”30 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 unsuccessful venture on the Georgia coast in 1526.31

The Florida peninsula offered the last land-based 

assistance and protection before the fleets turned 

sharply eastward to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Evidencing 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.32 Florida’s role and importance 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.33

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.34 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 Dickinson 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.35 Contemporary correspondence 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 Surruque 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.36 Additionally, the appearance of Europeans in the area 

destabilized the pre-Contact political situation 

among the Native American groups. European settlers 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 affiliation. 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.37 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 frequently 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 concerned 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.38

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 shipwrecked 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.39

After the establishment of a lasting Spanish settlement 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.40 Iron tools and glass 

beads of European manufacture as well as nativemade articles fashioned of European-transported 

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

east shore of the Banana River (south of the Seashore). 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 manufacture. 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.41 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.42

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 1546.43 Contemporary 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.44 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 language. 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 religious 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 immediately 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.45 Spain insisted that the papal 

decisions gave her exclusive rights to North 

America; France asserted that unsettled areas were 

free for anyone to colonize.46 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).47 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 expedition 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.48 These might 

have been the first Europeans to arrive in today’s 

United States seeking to escape religious persecution, 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.49

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.50 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 desperate French colonists. When Pedro Menéndez’s 

convoy appeared offshore a week later, Ribault suspended 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, Trinité, stood out to sea. 

Menendez headed south and on September 8 established 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 hurricane-strength storm hit, sweeping his helpless fleet 

to the south. Menéndez, realizing Ribault’s situation, marched northward to Fort Caroline. On 

September 20, 1565, Spanish forces surprised and 

overcame the depleted French garrison at Fort Car49. 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.51

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 northernmost group contained over 600 men from several 

ships, while the southernmost group held about 350 

men, including Jean Ribault and other survivors of 

the Trinité.

52 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 shipwreck, 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 Trinité.

53

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 rendezvous with the land forces.54

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.55 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 purportedly friendly cacique. Then Menéndez departed 

for Cuba with 50 of his own men and 20 French captives to acquire supplies for this detachment at Ais as 

well as for the main settlement at St. Augustine.56

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 prohibitions. Not only had Ribault’s sequence of 

misjudgments ended in disaster, but events within 

France itself were not favorable for attempting 

another settlement.57 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 territory 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.58

An earlier shipwreck victim, Pedro Bustinçuri, 

found himself caught up in the Spanish-French conflict 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 captivity in Florida.59

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.60

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 relations 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.61 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 

1542.62 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.63 French Louisiana, too, 

counted Indian slaves among its residents.

The establishment of missions was a universal characteristic of lands claimed and colonized by Spain, 

beginning even before the New World ventures 

when the Canary Islands came under Iberian 

hegemony in 1341.64 (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 proselytize 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 economic as the religious aspect of missionary activity, 

representative of Iberian society with its “interplay 

of worldly enterprise and religious purpose.”65

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.66

In Florida, the hierarchy of native officials remained 

largely intact in contrast to the missionary regimes 

established more than two centuries later in California. 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 missionaries, to send laborers to the capital at St. Augustine, 

and to report the presence of any non-Spanish foreigners. The chief of Surruque accepted gifts to 

cement the agreement. Part of the reason for the 

determined pursuit by the Spanish of Native Americans’ 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.67

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 discourage 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 shipwrecked victims who might wash ashore in the cape 

area and farther south, where most wrecks 

occurred.68

Spanish communiques make it clear that, at the 

beginning of the seventeenth century, the Seashorearea 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 shipwreck 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 diplomatic 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.69

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.”70 These runaway slaves 

might have become acquainted with Surruque captives when the Surruque hostages were in St. 

Augustine five years earlier and acquired information 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 earliest 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 runaways 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 international, concerns. Yet even in the early 1600s, the 

Spanish viewed the flights in the context of international rivalry.

Enslaved Africans had arrived from Spain as part of 

Pedro Menéndez’s colonizing group in 1565. Additional 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.71

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.72

To improve the colony’s security, Governor Ibarra 

sought to improve his understanding of local geography 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.73 It 

referred to Mosquito Lagoon as the Lake of Surruque 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 evidence 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. Locations 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-seventeenth-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 1566.74 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 perspective rather than a reflection of native political 

affiliations.75 Hann points out that there is no documentary 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 (doctrina) 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.76

At its height between 1630 and 1650, the mission 

system in Spanish Florida stretched from the administrative 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 Dickinson heard about an uprising by the Jororos in the 

vicinity of Cape Canaveral during which a Franciscan 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 persuading the chief of a town to embrace Catholicism, 

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

the chief, and another native convert.77

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 published 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 pro74. 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 hostility. 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.78 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 twoand-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 construction 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 settlement 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.79 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.80 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 “Confederate 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, Governor 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.81

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 confidence 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].”82

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 Americans 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 successfully enticed into Florida some Lower Creeks 

from central Georgia, but little is known about the 

first half century of relocation into Florida. Anthropologist 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 “colonization 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 “Seminole” derives from a Muskogee term simano-li,

which itself had been appropriated from the 

Spanish word cimarrón, with meanings of “wild” or 

“runaway.”83 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.84

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 eighteenth 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, factions, disagreements, and treachery among the 

native groups enhanced the Europeans’ positions in 

interchanges with the natives.85

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 sufficiently 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.86

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.87 The Seminole 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, worshiping, 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.88

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 possession 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 administrators split the former Spanish colony into East and 

West Florida by dividing it at the Apalachicola River 

and attempted to encourage settlement. The proclamation 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 established to attract veterans of the recent war and 

Protestant inhabitants who might relocate from anywhere except the British Isles. After a three-year 

period, grants were to be revoked if adequate development 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 mindset of British entrepreneurs, who felt themselves 

almost as invulnerable and unstoppable as the 

Empire itself seemed to be.89

Any orderly parceling of land grants necessarily 

relied on surveys, but the actual measuring often followed, 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.”90

William Gerard De Brahm, who had gained recognition 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.”91

Turnbull’s New Smyrna

By far the largest and what became the most notorious 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 surviving 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. Approximately 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 accustomed, 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.92

Turnbull intended to profit from an indigo plantation 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 difficult terrain and cultural misunderstandings in the 

Florida countryside. Prolonged indentures, the 

terms of which were not understood by many settlers, 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 governor 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 Governor 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.

93 Yet, the plantation’s original settlers and 

their descendants continued to pass through and 

attempt to develop lands near or within today’s Seashore 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 administrators 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.94

Just to the south of Turnbull’s New Smyrna plantation, 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 improvements 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 traditional work force of African slaves rather than 

experimenting with indentured workers and geoclimatological theories as Turnbull did.95

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 Mosquito 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 presenting the sacrificed properties in the very best 

possible light because most claimants expected 

compensation for only a fraction of the losses 

claimed.96 Although no remains of the Bissett plantation 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 grant97 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 documentation has placed the Elliott Plantation in this 

vicinity. The ruins are documented as site number 

8Vo160 in the Florida Master Site File. Archeological 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.98

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, 3rd Baronet of 

Stobs, and Member of Parliament from 

Roxburghshire, Scotland. His elder brother, Sir 

John Elliot, became the 4th 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 tierces99 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 commonly 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 beneficial 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 wellknown 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 Mosquitoe 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 hammocks.The map which accompanied the book 

describing his travels depicted wrecks along the Seashore’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 reputation. 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 abandoned 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 palmettoes. 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 restoration of the Floridas to the Spanish empire. This 

time it was the British who would evacuate, 

although a relatively sizable number of British subjects (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 immigrants 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 plantation 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 requirements. 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 villages.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 FloridaU.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 Americans. 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 plantations, discouraging rural ventures. Slaves were the 

usual booty–38 were taken from New Switzerland 

plantation west of St. Augustine and carried to Miccosukee, 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 properties 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 Mosquitoes 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 locations 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 settlement 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 settlement 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 approximates 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 Information 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 midpoint 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. Contemporary 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 Commission 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 ownership, 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. Filibuster was a nineteenth-century term for someone 

engaged in fomenting insurrections in foreign countries, 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 supported 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 practices 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 AfricanAmerican allies entered the conflict to protect their 

lands and their freedom as the expeditionaries 

ranged out beyond the areas of primarily white settlements. 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 countryside 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. Settlers 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 continued 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 Mosquitoes 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 followed 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 colonies 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 Incursions and Euro-American Expansion, 1500-1820, 

context are shell mounds and earthen burial 

mounds primarily associated with prehistoric activities 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 completed 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 forerunner 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 historic 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 Europeans’ 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 international 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 Seashore, 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 Classified 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. Transportation 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 environment, but their level of viability and profitability 

were largely dependent on the available transportation 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 transportation technology became more important after the 

Civil War, much of the Seashore area remained isolated and usually on the periphery of major 

economic activity. Extension of railroad lines into 

the Seashore by private corporations was not financially 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 government 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 AdamsOnís 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, 3rd 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 runaways 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. government agreed to subsidize the relocation with 

food, physical improvements, and schools. When 

sufficient food was not forthcoming and the Seminoles’ 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 disapproved 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 interpreters 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 contended 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 devastated 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 concerted 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 

War.”135

White settlers and farmers, including those in the 

Seashore area, took refuge in towns as the Seminoles 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 Seashore 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 reorganized as Marion County, and the following year, the 

same year that Florida achieved statehood, Mosquito County was renamed Orange County, and the 

county seat was moved from Enterprise to Mellonville (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 usefulness 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 LagoonIndian 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 terminus. 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 considered 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 distance between the two waters was only 725 yards 

and the highest point 8 1⁄2 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 suggested 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 surveyed 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 accommodate 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. soldiers 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 concentrated 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 captured many of Florida’s port towns and cities, which 

limited imports needed by the army and state residents 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 Seashore 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 provided cash to purchase imported goods, was denied. 

Many residents were, of course, already mostly selfsufficient 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 correspondence, 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, 1st 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 harvesting of live oaks in Florida for shipbuilding had 

begun in the British period, if not earlier (see discussion 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 Seashore.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 themselves, 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 survival, the Florida state government offered 

exemptions from military service to salt producers. 

Such exemptions were also available for cattle production, since the war effort throughout the South 

increasingly relied on beef from Florida after Confederate 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 magnesium 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 transportation 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 otherwise gone awry.151

Ruins located at Ross Hammock (CANA 034/

8Vo213) have been described by some as a saltworks 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 purported 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 blockaderunning 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 trafficking 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, centralized 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 disputed presidential election of 1876. The civil rights 

of ex-rebels were now restored and former Confederates 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 document. 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 nineteenth 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 Titusville, 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 correspondents 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. Physicians recommended visits to Florida, particularly for 

respiratory diseases. James E. Ingraham, who would 

become highly effective in administering the businesses 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 consumption (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 Intracoastal 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 pamphlet 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 Mosquito 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-footdeep, 50-foot-wide channel. The company received 

over a million acres for 268 miles of canal.158 Yet 

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 abandoned its trips on the river because of the growing 

sandbar. The Titusville Star stated that the company 

seemed to have already forgotten about the Haulover Canal and objected to the company’s receiving 

the grant of land which was considered compensation 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 transpor155. 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. Massachusetts established its first “huts of refuge” in 1787, but 

not until 1848 did the Federal government appropriate 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 situated 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 categories 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 lifesaving stations built between 1875 and 1886 along 

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

Mosquito lagoon facility opening in July 1886.166 An 

1884 Life-Saving Service manual spelled out specifications 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 construction. 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 barometric 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 notwithstanding. 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 Mosquito 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 fascinating 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 Hatteras, North Carolina, Life-Saving Station on the 

Outer Banks, where his father and a number of 

other relatives had long been employed by the LifeSaving 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. Fisherman 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 frequent 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 observation 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 decommissioned 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 Hutchinson Island near Stuart, Florida, which is open to 

the public. A scale model of the Mosquito Lagoon 

House of Refuge has been constructed from blueprints 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 transportation 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 residents 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 diplomat, 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 Seashore 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, railroads 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 conflict, 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 roadbuilding 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 designated 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 improvements to their lives which cities offered.

But farmers in the South did not become the advocates 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 champions 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, “promoters 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 Association 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 oncenumerous 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” alternated 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 brochure 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 oceanside 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 materialized 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 accommodate 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 protecting the area from development.195

Fitting in with the name “confusion” that the State 

Road Board sought to alleviate were the road designations within the Seashore boundary. Based on the 

U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USGS) quadrangle (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 Surrounding 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 continues 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 Mosquito 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. Mosquito 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 situation 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 understandable 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 municipalities 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 legislation recognized that trucks had become the 

preferred method of freight shipment and automobiles 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 diminished business.

More than improved highway travel was instrumental 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 comfortable for year-round residence. “Florida’s 

fantastic trajectory of population growth in the 

decades after 1950 would almost certainly have flat198. 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 Transportation 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 associated with the American period of Florida from 

1821 to 1888, when it was replaced by the New Haulover 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 Haulover 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 historic 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 vegetation, 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, particularly 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 Navigational 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 northsouth 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, revisions 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 Intracoastal 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 Criterion C for its embodiment of distinctive 

characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction: dredging for canal construction, canal 

construction and maintenance and for environmental alterations created by the former two. 

However, since the new canal is under the jurisdiction 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 correspondence written immediately after this Union sortie 

and purported destruction did not mention the disabling of a salt works as an accomplishment of a 

mission otherwise gone awry and which needed 

some accomplishment to commend itself. Archeological 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 peninsula’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 residents 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 residents from the North and the Midwest arrived as 

well in Florida, seeking inexpensive land and economic 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 barracks. 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/aerospace 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 combination 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 Commissioner” 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 privately claimed property. Thus, documentation of 

the timber-cutting activity often did not refer to specific 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 correspondence, 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 preliminary shaping of timbers that took place there 

prior to export of the timber to the North.208 

Liveoaking brought humans into the area temporarily. 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, residents, 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 presentday 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 confirmed. The lands that Swift purchased were 4,000 

acres in the Domingo Acosta Grant “in the neighborhood 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 transaction 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 longerterm 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 inmigration. 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 providing an initial transportation route to northern 

markets. The Seashore area offered similar waterborne 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 territorial 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 Britishera 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 themselves 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 replanted 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 agricultural 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, contemporaneous 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 development 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 sections 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: NewJournal 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 Seashore 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-Confederates, 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 illustrated 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 travelers 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 protected 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 homegrown 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 alligator-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 straightening 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 nineteenth-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 newcomers. 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 Unvarnished 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 prosperity 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 advertisements 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 vegetables 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 frequently 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 Carpenter, 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 nonresidents. 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 “Sanmetto,” a tonic for lung and prostrate trouble that, 

like many patent medicines, was 20 percent or more 

alcohol. George Wilkinson pioneered this agriculture 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 displayed 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 palmetto berry (which apparently failed to catch on) 

was Palmetto Drink, a blend of fruit and berry 

juice.235 

In-migration and Outmigration

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 deliveries, 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, postmasters 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 opposition’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 Postmaster 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 Haulover in 1886, probably typified the rural political 

appointee. Nauman, originally from Lancaster, 

Pennsylvania, could claim influential kin connections as nephew of long-time settler and major 

orange grower, Douglas Dummett. He was also 

executor of Dummett’s estate. Nauman subsequently 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 themselves 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 character. 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 siblings 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 practices 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 certainly 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 stationed 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 displeased with the light sandy soil and relocated.250

Butler Campbell’s son, Arthur, has provided some 

insight into life in the small African American settlement 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 importance that Butler Campbell and his neighbor, 

Andréw Jackson, placed on education as a means for 

improving the lives of their children. Rules established by the Board of Public Instruction for 

Brevard County in 1883 dictated that, “any locality 

claiming a school must provide a public schoolhouse, 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. Documentation 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 exercises 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 education 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 contributed to the surrounding community and made a 

difference in the lives of its students. 

However, during the 1960’s, the United States government 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 habitation. 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 rediscovered 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 Schoolhouse 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 residence. 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 communities 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 population, 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 Americans 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 associated 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 themselves 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 Confederate States. 

J. H. King acquired his property at Eldora using the 

homestead policy. Well-known residents of central 

Florida, whose families were already well-established 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 emancipated 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 citizens 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 soldiers’ 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 communities 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 maintained 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 settlement. 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 recognition 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 references 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 purchase 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, containing 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

7.268 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 Warnocks’ sales prospectus for the property and it later 

became known as the “Eldora House” or “Eldora 

Hotel.” The Home Place was of wood-framed construction, 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 Jacksonville “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 nicknamed “Eldora.”and first came to Eldora as an 

infant of two months.272 Alice Smethhurst journeyed 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 visitors 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 considered 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 surrounding 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 nineday 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 improvements 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 community 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 twentyfirst season at Eldora in January 1914. An anonymous guest was moved on March 1, 1916, to pen 

the following tribute to her:

To Axie

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 residents 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 construction.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 outbuildings, 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 overloaded transportation systems, and negative 

campaigns by northern banks were factors in the 

decline. Banks in Florida began to fail. Any possibility 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 depressions 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 separated by three feet. According to Towner’s 

“History,” the northern portion was the post office, 

school and general store. Both sections had shedroofed 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 relocated 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 particular 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 environmental 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 rectangular 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 nineteenth 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, components 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. Lawd289 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 transaction 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 proportions” 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-producing 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 elevation, 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 constructed prior to 1888.

The house’s location, atop the shell mound, is also 

an important siting characteristic. The 1888 foreclosure 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 Carpenter Turner, as Lord and Lady Turner. The 1911 

deeds in which the Turners conveyed the property 

to W. H. Snyder of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, contained 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 ownership 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 constructed prior to 1888 and is a rare example of 

Carpenter Gothic architecture. Only 74 such structures 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 construction dates ranging from as early as the 1890s to 

the mid-twentieth century, and two late-nineteenthcentury 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 community of Eldora and the House of Refuge. The 

house is 21⁄2-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-shouldered chimney on the south elevation. 

The main block of the house has a side-gabled 

gambrel roof with returns at the gable ends and fishscale-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 rectangular, side-gabled cupola. The wing to the rear 

(east) has a simple end-gabled roof featuring shedroofed 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 balustrade, 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-byside 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 varnished 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 concrete 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 cisterns 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 condition 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. Residents 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 constructed 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 Eligibility 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. Constructed 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, woodframed 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, shedroofed 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 171⁄2 feet by 311⁄2 

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. Two old structures 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, estimated 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 primarily 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; reconstruction of the main house kitchen into an AV 

room; installation of new double-hung windows 

and doors (plus shutters on the main house); installation 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 constructed 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 sidewalls 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 Population Influx after Wars have undergone recent 

scrutiny for listing on the National Register of Historic 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 additional 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 aerospace 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 configuration 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 Mosquito 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 intercontinental 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 accommodate 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 missilelaunching 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 necessary created safety concerns due to lack of space 

at the Canaveral launch facility. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the 

Air Force had to determine the best site for the 

launches, yet make recommendations and subsequent 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 6555th: Missile and Space Launches Through 1970, U.S. Air Force, 45th 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 TitusvilleCocoa-Melbourne also had become a dynamic area 

in conjunction with the Cape’s development. A 

report called the local population “missile-oriented” 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 possession of absentee owners, three-fifths of them 

outside of Florida. Included were several thousand 

acres of productive citrus groves, several small communities and some large-scale developments then in 

progress. Eminent-domain condemnation proceedings 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 protested 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 relocated 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 communities 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 Castellucio 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 relocated 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 authorization 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 contentious 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 Mosquito Lagoon. NASA invited Brevard County to 

maintain a public beach north of the launch facilities, 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 population 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 legislation empowered the Secretary of the Interior to 

close lands to the public at the request of the administrator 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 legislation 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 preservation 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 associated 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 Historic 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 Seashore to inform visitors of the travels of André 

Michaux through the Seashore area in late March 

and early April, 1788. Michaux was an internationally known botanist who collected plants in the 

Seashore as part of an 11-year trek through North 

America. Michaux has been credited with contributing 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 commented on the saw palmettos growing in the 

Seashore, and their proliferation within the Seashore 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 Seashore 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 Itinerary. 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 strategies 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 Seashore 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 documenting 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 Historic 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 communication. 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 interpretation 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 guerillastyle 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 interpretation. 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 maintained 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 recommendation is outside the scope of this study.

Not only does New Haulover Canal represent an 

important physical element in the Atlantic Intracoastal 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 transportation improvements in Florida financed by 

northern capitalists, who received huge acreage of 

Florida lands as incentives to carry out the improvements. The practice of these sorts of land incentives 

by the Federal government and the state government 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 associated 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 vestiges 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 inhabitants, 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—continues 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 community, 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 opportunity to catch the feeling of tranquil life along a 

Florida waterway before the era of rampant development. 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 represents 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 historic 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 elevated 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 foreclosure deed mentions the property’s relatively high 

elevation, an uncommon inclusion in the legal 

descriptions of the time. The inclusion of this information 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 dispersed 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 interpretive 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, Seminole 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 specifically 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 Seashore 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 documents might help to clarify this analytical 

dissonance. This HRS addresses the role of the Seashore area in the very early colonial relationships 

and interactions among Europeans, Native Americans, 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 documents 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 documents 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. Nineteenthcentury 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 Seashore 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 taperecorded 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 Seashore. Coutant’s family lived at the House of Refuge 

from 1891 to 1909. The photographs and taperecorded 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 information 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, Massachusetts, 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

Bibliography

Akin, Edward N. “The Sly Foxes: Henry Flagler, George 

Miles and Florida’s Public Domain.” Florida 

Historical Quarterly 58 (July 1979): 473-89.

Andréws, Evangeline Walker, and Charles McLean 

Andréws, eds. Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal or, God’s 

Protecting Providence. 1699. Reprint, Stuart, Fla.: 

Valentine Books, 1975.

Arana, Luis R[afael]. “The Alonso Solana Map of Florida 

1683.” Florida Historical Quarterly 42 (1964): 261.

_____, and Albert Manucy. The Building of Castillo de San 

Marcos. N.p.: Eastern National Park & Monument 

Association, 1977. 

Archives of the Indies (Archivo General de Indias [AGI]), 

Seville. Spain (microfilm copies at Flagler College, St. 

Augustine, Florida). 

Armstrong, Douglas R. French Castaways at Old Cape 

Canaveral. Palm Bay, Fla.: private printing, 1996.

Attaway, John A. A History of Florida Citrus Freezes. Lake 

Alfred, Fla.: Florida Science Source, Inc., 1997.

Bailyn, Bernard. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the 

Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New 

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Barbour, George M. Florida for Tourists, Invalids, and 

Settlers. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882.

Bartram, William. Travels through North & South 

Carolina, Georgia East & West Florida, . . . Mark Van 

Doren, ed. Originally published 1791. New York: 

Dover Publications, 1928.

Benson, Charles D., and William Barnaby Faherty. 

Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and 

Operations. Washington, D. C.: National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration, 1978.

Bernhard, Virginia, et al. Firsthand America: A History of 

the United States. 3rd ed. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine 

Press, 1993.

Bethell, Leslie, editor. The Cambridge History of Latin 

America. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University 

Press, 1984.

Bilstein, Roger E. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the 

NACA and NASA, 1915-1990. Washington, D.C.: 

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 

1989.

Blackman, William Fremont. History of Orange County, 

Florida. Vol. 1.1927. Reprint, Chuluota, Fla.: The 

Mickler House Publishers, 1973.

Bradbury, Alford O., and E. Story Hallock. A Chronology 

of Florida Post Offices. N.p.: The Florida Federation 

of Stamp Clubs, 1962.

Brewer, David M. “An Archaeological and 

Ethnohistorical Overview and Assessment of 

Mosquito Lagoon at Canaveral National Seashore, 

Florida.” M.S. thesis, Florida State University, 1991.

Brewer, David M. and Elizabeth A. Horvath. In Search of 

Lost Frenchmen. Tallahassee: Southeast Archeological 

Center, 2004.

Briggs, Loutrell W. Charleston Gardens. Columbia: 

University of South Carolina Press, 1951.

Buker, George E. Sun, Sand, and Water: A History of the 

Jacksonville District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

1821-1975. Fort Belvoir, Virg.: U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers (Washington, D.C.: Supt. of Docs., U.S. 

Government Printing Office), 1981.

Bullen, Ripley P., Adelaide K. Bullen, and William J. 

Bryant. Archaeological Investigations at the Ross 

Hammock Site, Florida. N.p. [Orlando?]: n.p., 1967.

 Bushnell, Amy Turner. Situado and Sabana: Spain’s 

Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces 

of Florida. New York: American Museum of Natural 

History, 1994.

Carter, Clarence E., ed. Territorial Papers of the United 

States. Vols. 22-26, Florida Territory. Washington, 

D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956-1962.

Cathedral Parish Records, Diocese of St. Augustine, 

conserved in diocesan offices at Jacksonville, Florida 

(microfilm copies).

Cleary, Mark C. The 6555th: Missile and Space Launches 

Through 1970. U.S. Air Force, 45th Space Wing 

History Office, 1991. On-line version at 

<www.patrick.af.mil/heritage>.

Covington, James W. “Migration of the Seminoles into 

Florida, 1700-1820.” Florida Historical Quarterly 46 

(1968): 340-57.
94 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Cumming, W. P., R. A. Skelton, and D. B. Quinn, The 

Discovery of North America. New York: American 

Heritage Press, 1971.

Davison, Kathryn L., 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, 1985.

Davison, Kit. Interviews about fires, September 1984 - 

February 1985, copies in Canaveral National 

Seashore research files.

East Florida Papers, Manuscript Collection, Library of 

Congress (microfilm copies). 

Florida State Census, 1945.

Florida State Gazetteer. Jacksonville: R. L. Polk & Co., 

1907.

Escalante Fontaneda, Hernando d’. Memoir of 

[Hernan]Do d’Escalante Fontaneda Respecting 

Florida. Translated by Buckingham Smith. Miami: 

n.p., 1944.

Friedman, Lawrence M. A History of American Law. New 

York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Fuller, Wayne E. The American Mail: Enlarger of the 

Common Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

1972.

Gannon, Michael, ed., The New History of Florida.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.

Garcilaso de la Vega. The Florida of the Inca. Translated by 

John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner. 

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951. 

Geiger, Maynard, O.F.M. The Franciscan Conquest of 

Florida (1573-1618). Washington, D.C.: Catholic 

University of America, 1937.

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

Cong, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. 33, January 1882.

Griffin, John W., and James J. Miller. “Merritt Island 

National Wildlife Refuge Cultural Resource 

Assessment.” Atlanta: National Park Service, 1978.

Griffin, Patricia C. Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans of 

Florida, 1768-1788. St. Augustine: St. Augustine 

Historical Society, 1990. 

Hann, John H. A History of the Timucua Indians and 

Missions. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 

1996.

 , ed. and trans. Missions to the Calusa. Gainesville: 

University of Florida Press, 1991.

Hawks, John Milton. The East Coast of Florida: A 

Descriptive Narrative. Lynn, Mass.: Lewis and 

Winship, 1887.

Hebel, Ianthe Bond. “The Dummetts of Northeast 

Florida.” Typescript, 1968, copy in Dummett File, 

Biographical Files, St. Augustine Historical Society.

 “The Swifts and the Live Oak Trade: A Little 

Known Chapter in Florida’s History.” Typescript, 

1950, copy in Canaveral National Seashore files.

Henshall, James A. Camping and Cruising in Florida. 

Cincinnati: R. Clarke & Co., 1884.

Horvath, Elizabeth A., ed. Final Report of the Archeological 

Investigations at the Seminole Rest Site (Cana-063/

8Vo124). Tallahassee: National Park Service, 1995.

Horvath, Elizabeth A., 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.

Jackson, Larry. Citrus Growing in Florida. Gainesville: 

University of Florida Press, 1991.

Johns, John E. Florida During the Civil War. Gainesville: 

University of Florida Press, 1962.

Kastner, Joseph. A Species of Eternity. New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, Inc., 1977.

Kersey, Harry A., Jr., The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes: 

A Critical Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana 

University Press, 1987.

Knetsch, Dr. Joe. “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.

Lyon, Eugene. “The Captives of Florida,” Florida 

Historical Quarterly 50 (1971): 1-24.

 . The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de 

Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565-1568. 

Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1974.

 , ed. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. Vol. 24. Spanish 

Borderlands Sourcebooks. New York: Garland 

Publishing Inc., 1995. 

MacLeod, Murdo. “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.

Mahon, John K. History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-

1842. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967.

Mehta, A. J., and H. K. Brooks. “Mosquito Lagoon Barrier 

Beach Study.” Shore and Beach 41/3 (Oct. 1973): 27-

34.

Milanich, Jerald T. Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida.

Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1994. 
National Park Service 95

 . Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe. 

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.

 . Florida’s Indians from Ancient Times to the 

Present. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

 and Nara B. Milanich, “Revisiting the Freducci 

Map: A Description of Juan Ponce de Leon’s 1513 

Florida Voyage.” Florida Historical Quarterly 74 

(1996): 324.

Miller, James J. An Environmental History of Northeast 

Florida. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 

1998.

Montgomery, John H. “History of Naval Air Station 

Banana River, 1940-1948.” [1948?] Typescript at 

North Brevard County Library. 

Mote, James D. “Historic Resource Study Status Report, 

Canaveral National Seashore, Florida.” Denver: 

National Park Service, Denver Service Center, 1977.

Motte, Jacob Rhett. Journey Into the Wilderness: An Army 

Surgeon’s Account of Life in Camp and Field During 

the Creek and Seminole Wars, 1836-1838. Edited by

James F. Sunderman. Gainesville: University of 

Florida Press, 1953.

Mowat, Charles Loch. East Florida as a British Province, 

1763-1784. 1943. Facsimile, Gainesville: University of 

Florida Press, 1964.

Myers, Ronald L., and John J. Ewel, eds. Ecosystems of 

Florida. Orlando: University of Central Florida, 1990.

National Park Service. A Report on a Seashore Recreation 

Survey of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Washington, 

D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1955.

National Park Service. “A Study of Alternatives for 

Canaveral National Seashore.” Canaveral National 

Seashore, 1968.

Naval History Division, comp. Civil War Naval 

Chronology. Washington, D. C : Department of the 

Navy, 1971.

Nelson, Nels C. “Chronology in Florida.” Anthropological 

Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 22, 

(2) (1918): 75-103. 

Norman, Eliane. “An Analysis of the Vegetation at Turtle 

Mound.” Florida Scientist 39, no. 1, 1976.

Official Automobile Blue Book, Highway Map of Florida.

Chicago and New York: Automobile Blue Book Inc., 

1925.

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the 

War of the Rebellion. Series I, Vol. 12. Washington: 

Government Printing Office, 1901.

Parker, Susan R. “The Second Century of Settlement in 

Spanish St. Augustine, 1670-1763.” Ph.D. diss., 

University of Florida, 1999.

Patrick, Rembert. Florida Fiasco: Rampant Rebels on the 

Georgia-Florida Border, 1810-1815. Athens: 

University of Georgia Press, 1954.

Patriot War Claims Manuscript Collection, St. Augustine 

Historical Society.

Peck, Douglas T. “Reconstruction and Analysis of the 

1513 Discovery Voyage of Juan Ponce de Leon.” 

Florida Historical Quarterly 71 (1992): 146-47

Pettingill, George W., Jr. The Story of the Florida Railroads. 

Bulletin No. 86. Boston: Railway and Locomotive 

Historical Society, 1952.

Pober, Deborah. “Demographics, Health and 

Sociopolitical Organization of Ross Hammock, 

Florida (8Vo131a)” M.S. thesis, University of Florida, 

1996.

Preston, Howard Lawrence. Dirt Roads to Dixie: 

Accessibility and Modernization in the South, 1885-

1935. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.

“Rambler.” Guide to Florida. New York: American News 

Co., 1873.

Reilly, Stephen Edward. “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): 395-

421.

Richards, John R., comp. Florida State Gazetteer and 

Business Directory. Vol. 1. New York: The South 

Publishing Company, 1886.

Romans, Bernard. A Concise Natural History of East and 

West Florida. 1775. Reprint, New Orleans: Pelican 

Publications, 1961.

Rouse, Irving. A Survey of Indian River Archeology. Yale 

University Publications in Anthropology. New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.

Saint Johns County, Fla., public records.

Schene, Michael G. Hopes, Dreams and Promises: History 

of Volusia County. Daytona Beach: New-Journal

Corp.,1976.

Siebert, Wilbur Henry. Loyalists in East Florida, 1774-

1785. Vol. 2. Deland: The Florida State Historical 

Society, 1929.

Shofner, Jerrell H. History of Brevard County. 2 vols. 

Stuart, Fla.: Brevard Historical Commission, 1995.

Schmalzer, P. A., 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).

Small, John K. “Green Deserts and Dead Gardens”, 

Journal of the New York Botanical Gardens, 24 (1923).
96 Canaveral National Seashore Historic Resource Study

Schmalzer, P. A., M. A. Hensley, and C. A. Dunlevy. 2001. 

Background characteristics of soils of Kennedy Space 

Center, Merritt Island, Florida: selected elements and 

physical properties. Florida Scientist 64:161-190.

Spanish Land Grants Manuscript Collection, Florida 

Division of Historical Resources, Tallahassee, 

Florida.

Star-Advocate, Titusville Florida.

Stiner, Josslyn. “Eldora: Ghost of Florida’s Past”, 

Unpublished manuscript, on file at Canaveral 

National Seashore, 2005.

Strickland, Alice. “The Dummett Family Saga.” Journal of 

the Halifax Historical Society (Daytona Beach) 2 

(1953?): 1-11.

Taylor, Walter Kingsley, and Eliane M. Norman. André 

Michaux in Florida: An Eighteenth Century Botanical 

Journey. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 

2002.

Tebeau, Charlton. A History of Florida. Coral Gables: 

University of Miami Press, 1971. 

Thurlow, Sandra Henderson. “Lonely Vigils: Houses of 

Refuge on Florida’s East Coast, 1876-1915.” Florida 

Historical Quarterly 76 (1997): 152-72.

The Tourist Resorts of the Halifax and North Indian River 

Country. Seabreeze, Fla.: Peninsular Publishing Co, 

1891.

Towner, Ann.” The History of Eldora and Surrounding 

Area.” Draft typescript, on file at Canaveral National 

Seashore, 1979.

United States Coastal and Geodetic Survey. Topopgraphic 

Maps.

Volusia County, Florida, public records.

Watt, Margaret Gibbs, compiler. The Gibbs Family of Long 

Ago and Near at Hand. [St. Augustine, Fla.?: 

Paramount Press, 1967].

Webb, Wanton S., ed. Webb’s Historical, Industrial and 

Biographical Florida. Part I. New York: W. S. Webb & 

Co., 1885.

Willey, Gordon K. “Burial Patterns in the Burns and Fuller 

Mounds, Cape Canaveral Florida.” Florida 

Anthropologist 7 (1954): 80-86.

Wood, Virginia Steele. Live Oaking: Southern Timber for 

Tall Ships. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1981.

Works Progress Administration. Spanish Land Grants in 

Florida. 5 vols. Tallahassee: State Library Board, 

1941.

Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. Anglo-Spanish Rivalry in North 

America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971. 

 . Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and 

Regeneration of the Muscogulgee People. Lincoln: 

University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

 . Florida in the American Revolution.

Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1975.
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; protecting 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 stewardship 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