Narcoossee Mill Ruins

Narcoossee Mill Ruins. . More than 35 years prior to sugarcane being grown commercially in South Florida, northern entrepreneurs came to Central Florida and started planting cane on newly drained, nutrient-rich, land. By 1888, Hamilton Disston, a Philadelphia saw manufacturer, who had acquired 4 million acres of Florida land, planted over 1,000 acres of sugarcane and built a cane mill capable of processing 372 tons of cane a day, near what was to become the city of St. Cloud. A short distance across East Lake Tohopekaliga from that mill was a newly platted English settlement called Runnymede., In 1885, an eccentric Englishman, Beauchamp Watson built a large hotel in that settlement. With all the interest in sugarcane and other crops being planted on the new soil in the surrounding countryside, Watson attempted to establish an agricultural school at his hotel., Concurrently, a government sugar experimental station was started there to grow and study different varieties of sugarcane and test for sugar content and yields per acre and related data. A cane grinding mill and a syrup evaporator, or condenser, was built on site to conduct these tests. The evaporator consisted of a brick base or pedestal, a firebox for a heat source, and a series of long shallow metal pans for reducing or sweating water out of the cane juice, in the syrup making process., For unknown reasons this station didn't operate very long and very small amounts of cane were grown. The project was abandoned and the mill and metal from the evaporator was sold for scrap, leaving the brick base behind. These are the ruins of that mill., In 1994, the Jacob Summerlin Camp #1516 Sons of Confederate Veterans, proposed to sponsor a War Between the States battle reenactment in Chisholm Park, which included the former site of the experimental station, with the brick base still there after almost 110 years., The camp needed a name for their battle. The settlement of Runnymede had not flourished and was only mentioned in legal descriptions of the surrounding subdivision. The nearest community still viable in modern day was Narcoossee, so the camp thought about the old base of the sugarcane mill and the "Battle at Narcoossee Mill" was born in 1994. In recent years the camp erected a fence, to help protect the site from being disturbed., Documentation of this facility from the USDA has proven elusive. We hope to find records of the mill, and commemorate it with a historical marker. The Jacob Summerlin Camp thanks Osceola County and all who help make the "Battle at Narcoossee Mill" successful, year after year each March, allowing us to present an entertaining and educational experience for all those who come see it.