Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park

Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park is a Florida State Park in Flagler Beach, Florida. It is three miles west of Flagler Beach on CR 2001, south of SR 100, and contains the ruins of an ante-bellum plantation and its sugar mill, built of coquina sedimentary rock, made up of crushed shells. It was the largest plantation in East Florida.HistoryThe plantation was developed beginning in 1821 by Major Charles Wilhelm Bulow, who acquired 4,675 acres on a tidal creek . With slave labor, he cleared 2,200 acres for the cultivation of commodity crops: indigo, cotton, rice, and sugarcane. At his death in 1823, his seventeen-year-old son, John Joachim Bulow inherited the property and managed it. At Christmas 1831 into January 1832, Bulow hosted the artist and naturalist John James Audubon, who explored the area in his continuing study of American birds. About that time, Bulow had a sugar mill constructed on his property. The plantation was destroyed in the Seminole War of 1836.The property and ruins were acquired by the State of Florida in 1945 and dedicated as a State Historic Park in 1957. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 29 September 1970.