New Smyrna Sugar Mill Ruins

The New Smyrna Sugar Mill Ruins (also known as the Cruger and DePeyster Sugar Mill) is a historic site in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, at 600 Old Mission Road, one mile west of the Intracoastal Waterway. On August 12, 1970, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. In 1830, a steam-operated sugarcane mill and a sawmill were erected at this site. The mills' masonry buildings were constructed of coquina, a sedimentary rock composed of fossilized tiny mollusc shells, quarried nearby. The structures included a crushing house, with a chimney and large arched doors and window openings, which contained the steam-driven grinding machinery that extracted the juice from the sugarcane. The entire process was carried out using slave labor and draft animals, under the management of the plantation overseer, John Dwight Sheldon. On Christmas Day in 1835, the mills and other buildings were destroyed by Native Americans during the Second Seminole War; only the walls were left standing, with the machinery inside them, made by the West Point Foundry of Cold Spring, New York, mostly undamaged. The site was further altered by soldiers who were garrisoned there to keep the Seminoles under surveillance.