On this, our last day in Florida, we went to Kingsley Plantation which was pretty interesting. Old Zephaniah (no shit) Kingsley was a pretty progressive plantation owner. Although he had slaves, he married one of them, Anna, and she ended up being basically the plantation operator and owned some slaves herself. It was a different era, then.
Anna Kingsley ended up with 350 acres of the plantation because she engaged in a scorched earth policy when the land was going to be overrun by the enemy and was awarded the land as compensation. She was able to defend her interests against suits filed by some of Zephaniah’s scumbag kin who thought they should get her land despite being unworthy. She was no slouch and basically ended up being about the best asset Ol’ Zeph ever had. The plantation house is not too big but the lands around it were extensively farmed for cotton. Most of the land, except that portion at the plantation house, is now overgrown with magnificent Florida flora. The roads are all covered with a shady canopy of trees. The brush on either side of the entry road (all 3 miles of it) is impenetrable unless armed with machetes or chain saws.
We left Kingsley and drove up the road to Amelia Island which is covered with high-end housing tracts with names like “The Enclave” and stores in upscale mini-malls with names like “The Shops at Amelia Island.” It is nice if you are rich but it definitely cuts down on coastal access for mere peons. Almost the entire beachfront is privately owned, probably so you folks can’t see or walk on our beach.
At the very NE corner of Florida we went to a pre-Civil War fort called Fort Clinch. It is a masonry fort from the early 1850s that is remarkably good condition and has a terrific views over the St. Mary’s River and the Atlantic. Maybe one of the reasons that the fort is in such good shape is because absolutely no battles were fought here although the North and the South both occupied the fort at different times during the Civil War. Robert E. Lee told his troops to desert the fort when the Union Army got close because, like future far-sighted military leaders, he believed fixed fortifications were a testament to military stupidity.
From the fort we headed back to the Invader to prep for our journey tomorrow into Georgia.
Florida has been a great place to visit with plenty of stuff to see, abundant wildlife and pretty good roads despite the fact they seem to be working on all the roads all the time even though we were rarely able to see any highway workers on the job. We did see lots of detours, hundreds of thousands of delineator cones and barrels, many cautionary signs and lots of road construction equipment but no workers doing anything ever. Stay away from the beaches and Disney World and you will be okay.