Our
first stop of the day was at one of the sites of the Timucuan
Ecological and Historical Preserve. The Kingsley plantation was unusual
because Kingsley’s wife was a freed slave. When America bought Florida
from Spain, the rights of freed slaves were greatly curtailed. Mr
Kingsley argued for their rights to no avail, and ended up moving his
family and his slaves to Haiti, where they were all freed. The Junior
Ranger program just required us to walk around to the few buildings of
the former plantation and answer some questions about life back in the
plantation days.
Our next stop was another site of the Timucuan Preserve, Fort Caroline National Monument. The French built a fort here but were driven out by the Spanish. The original fort is long gone, but the park service built a replica. This site also contains the main visitor center for the Preserve. There were a few displays about both the history and the ecology of the Preserve, but it was fairly small, and there wasn’t a movie. There are also nature trails at the nearby Theodore Roosevelt area, but we didn’t go there, as the Junior Ranger program dealt with just the visitor center and the fort.
We haven’t been making as good of time as I anticipated the last few
days. When I looked at the maps, the national parks and sites on the
southeast coast looked pretty close together. However, looks can be
deceiving. The sites we have been visiting the past few days are pretty
much all located on the east sides of islands with only one way in and
one way out, and on two lane roads with lots of traffics, turns, and
stop signs and signal lights. The first two sites we visited today were
some of the worse – at the first one, the visitor center was at the end
of a two mile long narrow dirt road lined with trees with low hanging
branches. The next site was only a two miles away, but we had to drive
about 10 miles west and then 10 miles east to reach it. Luckily, all
four of the sites we visited today had pretty short Junior Ranger
programs, so we were able to get them all in, but I definitely would
have liked to spend a bit longer looking at a few of them.
Our
first stop of the day was at one of the sites of the Timucuan
Ecological and Historical Preserve. The Kingsley plantation was unusual
because Kingsley’s wife was a freed slave. When America bought Florida
from Spain, the rights of freed slaves were greatly curtailed. Mr
Kingsley argued for their rights to no avail, and ended up moving his
family and his slaves to Haiti, where they were all freed. The Junior
Ranger program just required us to walk around to the few buildings of
the former plantation and answer some questions about life back in the
plantation days.
Our next stop was another site of the Timucuan Preserve, Fort Caroline National Monument. The French built a fort here but were driven out by the Spanish. The original fort is long gone, but the park service built a replica. This site also contains the main visitor center for the Preserve. There were a few displays about both the history and the ecology of the Preserve, but it was fairly small, and there wasn’t a movie. There are also nature trails at the nearby Theodore Roosevelt area, but we didn’t go there, as the Junior Ranger program dealt with just the visitor center and the fort.
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