As we celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, the America250 initiative invites us to explore the many layers of history at America’s most storied natural places. At De Leon Springs State Park, a proud member of the Adventures Unbound family, we are honoring the Civilian Conservation Corps workers who served at a camp near these springs during the 1930s, adding one more chapter to a story that stretches back nearly two centuries.

A Spring with Many Lives

De Leon Springs has been continuously used for nearly 200 years. Colonel Orlando Rees built Florida’s only water-powered sugar mill on this site in 1831, grinding sugarcane and corn on a 2,000-acre plantation. Seminoles burned the buildings in 1835, prompting Colonel Zachary Taylor, the future president, to send troops. The mill was rebuilt in the early 1900s and eventually became the beloved Old Spanish Sugar Mill restaurant, where visitors still make their own pancakes on griddles built into the tables.

During the 1930s, a CCC camp operated at or near De Leon Springs in Volusia County. Florida CCC camp records document a “Deleon Springs” camp among the state’s roughly 31 active installations. The CCC operated an average of nine private forestry camps across Florida, and private landowners who would plant 5,000 or more trees could receive CCC assistance from camps within 40 miles. CCC enrollees in the De Leon Springs area likely worked on reforestation and forestry projects across Volusia County, planting trees on depleted land and building the fire prevention infrastructure that protected the region’s remaining forests.

Across the state, the CCC’s impact was enormous: approximately 49,000 men served in Florida, planting over 13 million trees, building 3,000 fire lookout towers, and constructing 126,000 miles of truck trails.

Pancakes on Two Centuries of History

Today, De Leon Springs State Park is a place where you can swim in a spring that powered a plantation sugar mill, eat pancakes in a building with 19th-century roots, and walk trails through forests the CCC helped protect. When you visit, you are standing at the intersection of nearly every era of Florida history, from plantation agriculture to the CCC’s conservation mission to the quirky roadside attractions of the 1950s.

To learn more about how we are celebrating the diverse stories behind America’s national heritage, visit America250 at Adventures Unbound.