Sometimes it’s hard to believe that an abandoned city with seemingly nothing to offer was once a thriving community where dozens of people lived. It is the case of the Ellaville a county in Florida founded in the 1860s by a lumber magnate of which today only ruins remain.
Who was once governor of the state of Florida, George Franklin Drew, was responsible for creating this city. His story is worthy of admiration even though his legacy is almost forgotten today.
The story of the magnate who created a city in 1860
According to the Abandoned Atlas Foundation, George F. Drew was born in August 1827 in New Hampshire and was forced to leave school at the age of 12 to work on the family farm and help the economy. In 1841 he moved to Massachusetts where he became a steam engine apprentice and by 1846 he was old enough and experienced enough to be sent to New York to supervise the construction of a new mill.
Years later he moved to Columbus, Georgia, and opened his own machine shop. Later he opened a sawmill and in 1854 he married Amelia Dickens with whom he had six children. His business prospered because during the Civil War in 1861 he supplied lumber to the Confederate government.
But it was not the only business he ventured into. He also began producing salt near St. Andrews Bay in Florida. Although he had to abandon the business when a raiding party destroyed his equipment.
He then decided to sell his mill in Columbus and moved to Adams Station in Lee County, Georgia, where he opened another sawmill. Although he continued to support the government, he was against the secession of the southern states, so he was even in favor of black people being given weapons to support the Union.
For his ideas and for having helped a man escape military conscription, in 1863 he was arrested on charges of disloyalty and imprisoned for a year. Resentful of the confederacy he left the south.
He decided to move to Florida and once the civil war ended he opened another sawmill. and a lumber yard where he employed workers from his previous company. Little by little the place became a small settlement which he called Ellaville, in honor of his old servant Ella.
The sawmill that gave life to a Florida city
Later, between 1868 and 1871, Drew filed a lawsuit in the court of claims of the USA to be rewarded for 200 bales of cotton that had been taken from him during the Civil War.
The court determined that he was right and they gave him US$35,000 with which he partnered with Louis Bucki, a Prussian immigrant from New York, with whom he founded Drew & Bucki Lumber Company, from which they expanded the sawmill operations.
In a short time his company became the largest sawmill in Florida with more than 1,200 acres near Ellaville With almost 500 people working, it even had branches in New York City and Jacksonville. They later expanded their business to the production of railway carriages by forming their own private railway company.
The business was so prosperous that Ellaville It soon flourished and had 1,000 residents and a railway line that ran through the city and led directly to the mill. In addition, schools, churches, a steamboat dock, a police station and a Masonic lodge were built.
With his fortune, Drew built a two-story mansion to the northeast surrounded by gardens. As reported, the place had 10 rooms, oak floors, a staircase made of imported mahogany, fireplaces adorned with marble mantels, and plaster designs decorating the ceilings. The mansion was one of the first homes in the area to have running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, and even a telephone.
Drew’s popularity was such that in 1870 he was named president of Madison County. He wanted to be a senator, but he didn’t succeed.. However, he won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1876 and was elected even though he was from New Hampshire, as people saw him as a savior who could keep Florida away from radical Republicans. During his tenure he created the State Immigration Office to help promote settlement and also created the first health boards.
After his term he returned to Ellaville and sold his company’s shares to Bucki in 1883. He later opened a wholesale company and eventually resumed his lumber and sawmill business. His wife Amelia died on September 26, 1900, and just hours after making funeral arrangements Drew also passed away.
Little by little the city fell into oblivion. By 1895, the Railway Gazetteer of Florida and the directory of state-owned enterprises recorded that Ellaville It had a population of only 300 inhabitants. Furthermore, in 1898 Drew’s mill was destroyed in a fire and, although it was quickly rebuilt, the wood it used ran out and in 1900 it closed.
Without the prosperity of the mill, little by little the city began to decline due to the lack of work and the great floods it suffered. Problems that only increased with the start of the war and the depression. Even Drew’s large mansion gradually deteriorated when the water flooded it and years later it was vandalized and destroyed until a fire completely destroyed it in 1970 despite the fact that the state had tried to save it by allocating US$10,000.
The last thing to survive was a general store and the post office, but they closed in 1942. Years later the area was still visited because US Hwy 90 ran through the center of town. However, in 1986 when the Hillman Bridge was replaced creating a path bypassing Ellaville, Finally the city remained like a ghost town.
It is now a tourist destination in Florida
Although there is nothing of what the city once was, some lovers of abandoned landscapes come to the town to go hiking or stay in touch with nature. Among what you can enjoy in the surrounding area is undoubtedly the Suwannee River, as well as the foundations of the Drew Mansion.
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