by This page is dedicated to Florida historical markers near Port Orange Dunlawton’s Building Blocks. There are many historical markers in Florida. This marker in Volusia County is an excellent example.
Dunlawton’s Building Blocks
This Florida Historical Marker is entitled Dunlawton’s Building Blocks coquina up close and is located in Port Orange in Volusia County, Florida. The location is 950 Old Sugar Mill Road. Marker is on Old Sugar Mill Road east of Herbert Street, on the left when traveling east.
Inscription on the Marker
The inscription reads:
Dunlawton’s Building Blocks. coquina up close. The ruins here include chimneys and other structures made of coquina, Spanish for “tiny shell.” Quarried locally (and elsewhere in the Southeast), this native stone contains mollusk shell fragments and quartz sand, bound together by calcium carbonate. Centuries after the Spanish first used coquina in Florida, frontier Americans chose it for their sugar factory., Visitors to this mill in the 1830s would have found tightly mortared blocks that looked white or pastel-colored. That’s because coquina workers (likely free craftsmen and slaves) applied lime plaster to Dunlawton’s structures. After Seminoles burned the Anderson plantation, this coating largely dropped off, leaving the blocks we see today., By the 1850’s, Dunlawton had a new owner and a new look. John Marshall acquired the lands in 1846, then enlarged his sugar works, adding limestone boulders (called bog rock) and slathering them with thicker mortar than the coquina masons had used. Cobbling together buildings and machines was a tradition here., For your safety and Dunlawton’s survival as a historic site, please stay off the ruins and avoid touching the coquina. Future visitors will appreciate your help, and so will Volusia County., [ Illustration ] , A coquina quarry in Florida. , Detail from a print in Picturesque America, 1872., [ Photos ] , Early twentieth-century snapshots of the ruins: a coquina machine base and a wall with bog rock. Builders also used brick for the sugar factory’s boiler cradles, fireboxes, kettle bases, and more. , Photos courtesy of the Halifax Historical Museum, Daytona Beach, Feel free to touch this piece of cut coquina, and notice the shells that form it. Below the interpretive panel is a lime-plastered block., These building remains and archaeological resources are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. They represent a rare surviving example of a nineteenth-century agricultural-industrial venture in Florida.
Marker Sponsor and Install Date for Dunlawton’s Building Blocks
Placed by Volusia County and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, assisted by the Florida Historical Commission.
Maps & Location Views
Using mapping services from Google, we can show detailed location maps and street views if they are available.
Sometimes you will be able to see the Dunlawton’s Building Blocks Marker in Google Maps. A 360-degree view of the area near the marker is available on the link below. You can see the marker or monument and read it in many cases.
The History of Port Orange
More than a century before the Pilgrims set foot at Plymouth Rock, in 1513, Florida began its modern-day history, of which Orlando is a part.
During this period, Florida was still part of the United States Territory and not yet a state; therefore, many Native American tribes occupied land throughout Central Florida, including Seminole Indians who had migrated there from Georgia during the First Seminole War (1817-1818).
In 1838, the U.S. Army built Fort Gatlin south of the present-day Orlando City limits to protect settlers from attacks by Indians during the Second Seminole War. During the Civil War, Orlando’s role included supplying the Confederacy with food, cattle, and horses from the vast plantations in the region.
Today Orlando is recognized as a global tourist attraction and entertainment city
About the Florida Historical Marker Program
One of the most well-known and noticeable public history initiatives of the Division of Historical Resources is the Florida Historical Marker Program. It is intended to increase residents’ and visitors’ enjoyment of Florida’s historic places and to increase public knowledge of the state’s rich cultural past.
About Floridamarkers.com & Florida Historical Markers Near Port Orange Dunlawton’s Building Blocks
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