The Refuge Brings Renewal

The lumber industry story and the Refuge conservation and restoration story are intertwined. The industry used the forest resources to build the thriving communities of earlier times. The Refuge is restoring more sustainable forestry, protecting the river from agricultural and commercial development, and enabling the environmentally dependent economies and quality of life of the current fishing, clamming, and ecotourism dependent communities.

Almost nothing is left of the former village of Vista and its sawmill that occupied the site of the present headquarters of the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges. The current Vista property has a cluster of modest buildings that once served as the regional operations center and later as an executive lumbering camp for the Cummer Cypress Company, a unit of a far-flung, family-owned conglomerate.

from the Bender Report

Redcedar and Baldcypress Trees of the Riverine Forest

The first lumbering in the Lower Suwannee region focused on the local redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) trees. Abundant in coastal areas, the aromatic and easily worked cedar wood was in demand for making pencils. In 1900, Thomas Yearty built a cedar sawmill at Vista. The site was purchased by the Cummer companies in 1902 as part of a huge land acquisition focused on harvesting baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) trees. In the early twentieth century the Lower Suwannee region had vast acreages of riverine forest and pine savanna. These resources were exploited in separate waves. First, redcedars were harvested for the pencil industry. The Yearty sawmill continued operation until about 1915 by which time lumbering of cypresses by the Cummers was well underway and they established a new sawmill at nearby Sumner, Florida.

Longleaf Pines of the Pine Savanna

Later most of the uplands were cut. On the Cummer properties, as elsewhere on the Florida peninsula and throughout the southeastern coastal plain, the uplands were covered by pine savannas. They were mostly dominated by centuries old and slow-to-regenerate longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). Longleaf pines are difficult to propagate and highly dependent on fire. Once cut over, longleaf pine savannas were either invaded by deciduous trees or converted to commercial pine plantations, where faster growing species were planted in closely spaced rows and harvested in as little as 20 years.

Hardwoods and Turpentine

Having cut all the marketable cypress trees and longleaf pines in less than two decades, in 1924 the Cummer Cypress Company sold off the land. They repurchased it in 1936 to begin the next stage, harvesting hardwood trees left standing when the cypresses were removed. These hardwoods, particularly the black gum tree (Nyssa sylvatica) commonly called a tupelo or black tupelo, although little valued for building were in demand for another thriving Cummer business, manufacturing boxes used for shipping Florida citrus.

Pine Trees with Hearty style boxes to catch sap flow for turpentine. Florida Memory Image NO. NO43997

The Cummer companies also developed a turpentine camp where sap from remaining pines was harvested and distilled into chemical products.

Executive Hunting and Fishing Camp

Lumbering in the area continued into the early nineteen fifties. Following local depletion of marketable lumber, the Vista site served as a recreation facility for company employees, guests, and customers. Used to provide hunting and fishing opportunities for privileged men, records passed down by word of mouth among family members indicate that Vista and its amenities were off limits to women.

The Historic Structure Assessment Report by Bender & Associates Architects, commissioned by Friends with a $50,000 grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources, provides a comprehensive overview of Vista's history, including an abundance of old and modern photos.
For lots more about the people and places related to Vista's history,
see the Report.

From Commercial to Conservation Lands

In the 1970s, the Cummer Cypress Company donated 970 cut-over riverfront acres, excluding the Vista site, to the Nature Conservancy and encouraged nearby landowners to follow suit. Those acres became the founding lands of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge. In 2011, Sandra Smith and Linda Alexander, heirs to the Vista site, gave it to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to be added to the Refuge. They retained life tenancy until 2022 when they turned over the keys to Refuge Manager Andrew Gude and Vista became available for Refuge use. The donors’ vision is that the structures and setting of Vista can now be part of building community appreciation of the Refuge’s conservation and restoration missions.

Vista is a touchstone of that once thriving timbering industry in Florida. Its buildings and grounds speak to the commercial and social importance of the industry and have much to tell visitors about who lived and worked in this part of Florida in recent centuries, including many African American workers. It also is likely that the thriving indigenous communities known to have been active on other parts of the Refuge’s lands also have used and valued this site.