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)
“Up a lazy river by the old mill run, that lazy, lazy river in the noonday sun.”
—Sidney Arodin, U.S. songwriter. “Lazy River,” Peer International Corp. (1931)
“The Papacy is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof; For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruins of that Heathen Power.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Since the last one in a graveyard is believed to be the next one fated to die, funerals often end in a mad scramble.”
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)