Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins

A small free roadside park preserving the stone-and-iron remains of a mid-nineteenth-century sugar mill. It is more substantial than it sounds: the limestone chimney still stands, the great iron evaporating pans sit in their original positions, and an interpretive panel explains how cane was crushed, juiced and reduced to crystallised sugar.

The site is a five-minute stop off Highway 19 on the way into Old Homosassa, but worth it for the quietness — picnic tables, a few oaks dripping with Spanish moss, and almost no other visitors. Open daylight hours; no admission charge.

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A story
David Levy Yulee — Florida's first U.S. senator and the first Jewish member of the Senate — built this 5,000-acre plantation in the 1850s. The mill supplied sugar to Confederate forces during the Civil War until Union raiders burned the main house in 1864. The kettle, evaporator, machinery and limestone chimney all survive.