Suwannee Saw and Planing Mills - Ellaville, Florida

Ellaville, Florida is a ghost town in Florida located in the

Suwannee River State Park Suwannee River State Park is a Florida State Park located near Live Oak. It offers some of the best backcountry canoeing opportunities in the state. Visitors can see cypress trees, southern magnolia, herons, American coots, turtles and hawks. The ...

in Suwannee County,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Ellaville was located at the merging place of the

Suwannee River The Suwannee River (also spelled Suwanee River) is a river that runs through south Georgia southward into Florida in the southern United States. It is a wild blackwater river, about long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset hig ...

and Withlacoochee River.

History

Ellaville was founded in 1861 by

George Franklin Drew George Franklin Drew (August 6, 1827 – September 26, 1900) was the 12th Governor of the U.S. state of Florida. Early life and career George Franklin Drew was born on August 6, 1827 in Alton, New Hampshire. Drew had a grammar school level ...

a successful businessman and future governor of Florida. Franklin decided to build a mansion on the western banks of Suwannee River. The town was named Ellaville for honoring one of his slaves named Ella. He and Louis Bucki then built a mill that employed over 500 people and was one of the largest in Florida at the time. Soon the

Florida Railroad The Florida Railroad was the first railroad to connect the east and west coasts of Florida, running from Fernandina to Cedar Key. The line later became part of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and, where still in use, is operated by CSX Transport ...

built a line to the town that had direct access to the mill. Soon after that the town was booming. The town was in its heyday in the early 1870s and had a train station, two schools, two churches, a steamboat dock,

masonic lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

, commissary and a sawmill. It was also involved in

turpentine Turpentine (which is also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, terebenthene, terebinthine and (colloquially) turps) is a fluid obtained by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines. Mainly used as a special ...

, railroad car building and logging. The town even had 1,000 residents in its peak. Later on in 1876, Franklin the town's founder went on to be governor. The town then soon started to decline near the turn of the century starting when its mill burned down in 1898 but was rebuilt quickly. Though there was no longer a significant number of pine still left. Both of the rivers soon had flooded and with the onset of the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

showed there was no future for the town and the post office closed in 1942. The Drew Mansion was then abandoned and vandalized for many years until it was burnt to the ground in the 1970s. In 1986, the Hillman Bridge built in 1925 by the

Federal Aid Project Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

and designed by the RHH Blackwell Company of

East Aurora East Aurora is a village in Erie County, New York, United States, southeast of Buffalo. It lies in the eastern half of the town of Aurora. The village population was 5,998 per the 2020 census. It is part of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls Met ...

, New York. It was abandoned and replaced by a new bridge across the river.

References

{{coord, 30.383, -83.172, type:city_region:US-FL, display=title Ghost towns in Florida Geography of Suwannee County, Florida 1861 establishments in Florida