Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park is a Florida State Park located in Homosassa, off U.S. 19. It contains the ruins of a sugar plantation owned by David Levy Yulee. Yulee was a delegate of the Territorial Legislative Council. After Florida became a state, he was elected by the legislature in 1845 to the US Senate, becoming the first Jewish American to serve there. After Florida seceded from the Union, Yulee served in the Confederate Congress. He is credited with having developed a network of railroads that tremendously boosted the state's economy.
At Homosassa, Yulee established a sugar cane plantation, which was destroyed during the American Civil War. The original plantation covered more than 5,000 acres (2,000 ha), and was worked by approximately 1,000 enslaved African Americans. They raised sugar cane, citrus, and cotton. The large mill (which was steam-driven) ran from 1851 to 1864. It produced sugar, syrup and molasses, the latter used in making rum.
At the park, the stonework (foundation, well and 40-foot chimney) of the mill, iron gears, a cane press, and some of the other machinery remain. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 12, 1970.
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“Some days your hat’s off to the full-time mothers for being able to endure the relentless routine and incessant policing seven days a week instead of two. But on other days, merely the image of this woman crafting a brontosaurus out of sugar paste and sheet cake for her two-year-old’s birthday drives a stake through your heart.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
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—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)