- April 26, 2024
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Ormond was home to an industrial site before the Revolutionary War.
There seems to be a museum-type quiet surrounding the Three Chimneys Sugar Mill archaeological site, even though West Granada Boulevard hums by on the other side of a curtain of trees.
Three centuries are represented in the remaining structures, from a late 1700s English rum distillery to 1900s tourism.
Many people pass by the site, located at 715 W. Granada Blvd., every day, hardly noticing the historic marker declaring it as a Florida Heritage Landmark. But on March 22, the public will be able to tour the site in the annual Open House conducted by the Ormond Beach Historical Society Preservation Committee. The free event, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., will feature guided tours, and visitors will also be able to walk around and read the many interpretive signs.
Dr. Philip Shapiro, committee chairman, said the city is lucky that the ruins have survived through the centuries in the heart of the city. Many sugar mills and other sites have been lost to development and time.
“It’s a miracle that the bricks were never salvaged,” he said. He places the importance of the site on the level of Plymouth Rock and St. Augustine and.
“This is a unique local resource,” he said. It’s documented as the first sugar mill and rum distillery in the continental U.S.
Visitors will find a boiling house, where sugar cane was cooked into a molasses, and a distillery, where rum was made from molasses. The rum was used for water purification, as well as its alcoholic effect.
Indentations remain in the boiling house wall, where a bench was installed for the slaves who ladelled the cane slurry into smaller and smaller kettles until it became molasses. The chimney of the distillery has fallen, but Shapiro hopes to one day having it restored.
Although named Three Chimneys, there is only one chimney standing on the site, and it’s from a house built in 1914 by Billy Fagan, who used the boiling station to support his front porch. The three chimneys that were there when the site was named are long gone.
Fagan operated an early Ormond Beach tourist attraction, building a treehouse in a large oak. Tourists, most likely from the Ormond Hotel, could climb up and see the ocean. He also displayed two alligators.
Fagan’s oak tree is still there and the walk provides an added treat. It’s on the original Kings Road, a 12-foot path under a canopy of trees. You see King’s Road as it looked when built in the 1790s.
The sugar mill operation ended with the Revolutionary War, and lumber was harvested in the area through the 1800s. After Fagan, a farm was operated on the site, and a well and gate still remain.
The site was discovered in dense vegetation in 1992 by Marsha Watson Walls, a descendent of local settlers. She reported the find to the City Commission and the Historical Society, and it was cleaned out in the 1990s.
The state bought the property in 2003 and entered a land management lease with the Ormond Beach Historical Society. Volunteers maintain the property year round.
If you go
Three Chimneys Sugar Mill Open House
715 W. Granada Blvd.
Free
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
March 22
