Traveling with Tucson : Florida - Bulow Plantation Ruins State Park

It is a hot day -expected to be in the low 80's. In the afternoon we head to Bulow Plantation Ruins State Park to find some hiking in the shade.

If I had known it was so close I would have gone there sooner only 1/2 hour just the other side of Palm Coast.

The entry is directly opposite the sign on Old Kings Rd - easy to miss as it is the original Plantation road.

159 Slaves were quartered here in 46 houses that were 16 x 12 feet. They had garden plots and were allowed to fish and hunt for food. All that remains are the coquina foundations of a few.

There are massive trees all over and the surround woods seem to slowly be taking over the plantation Tucson takes advantage of the shade.

John Wilhem Bulow purchased 9,000 acres in Florida, where he would be able to grow sugarcane, cotton, rice, and indigo. In 1821 Bulow had the acreage and with a tidal creek just alongside his property, he had a way to transport crops. He didn’t have cleared land which meant using slave labor. It’s speculated that about 300 slaves were sent from his older brother’s plantation in South Carolina to handle this Herculean effort. Bulow died at the age of 44 two years later. His son John, returned from school in France to take over – he was only 16 at the time. He learned fast, adding a mill to turn Bulow Ville’s sugarcane into sugar, molasses, and rum in1831.

The Sugar Plantation Ruins sit on about 150 acres. The largest Plantation in Florida, at its peak it covered 2.000 acres.

Besides all of the information plaques around the Mill, there is an interpretive center.

The Mill itself was over 11,000 square feet and constructed from local coquina in the antebellum architectural style

The Second Seminole War began in 1835. Several battles happened near the plantation. John Bulow was forced by the local militia, to leave the plantation. They wanted to use the stone buildings as a fortified base for their military operations, They were discovered by Seminole warriors and large portions of the plantation were burned and most of the buildings were razed to the ground during the attack. That was the end of the Bulow Plantation.

Here is an artists interpretation of what the original Mill may have looked like.

You can rent a canoe or kayaks to run the 13 mile canoe trail through Bulow Creek. Hoping we can make it back to do that .

Just before the entrance to the Ruins there is a trail head for Bulow Woods Trail that runs 7 miles up to Bulow Creek State Park and the Fairchild Oak.

Our plan is to hike about 2.5 miles to a ditch and footbridge

It feels like walking through a jungle

Massive Live Oaks abound

as do some muddy spots

Just over an hour later we reach the Bridge

The we find the trail back

Tucson saw an Armadillo - it was quite the production

We got back to the truck just as they were closing the gate to the Park - glad we parked at the trailhead. The ranger said we should go the 4 miles to Bulow Creek State Park to see the Fairchild Oak - said to be between 400 and 600 years old