Winter Rally Schedule Updates Tom Nagle
Will be doing the Motowayz Adventure Bike Setup - Bulletproofing Body Positioning presentation on Friday at 5pm in the Courtyard also He will be showing a BDR film Saturday at 4pm in the dining hall
Greg Rice
Unfortunately, due to family health needs, Greg will be unable to attend the rally
Airheads
Events planned for Saturday afternoon in the campground shelter area. 1:00 David Woodburn doing an informal side of the road carb tuning demo. 2:00 Airhead Q & A session. Fielding ?? will be D. Woodburn, Kevin Reimer, John Glazenbrook, Duck, Jack Wells (?) and I. 3:00 Ride-in airhead bike show. 4:00 Airheads Annual meeting led by Duck. Estimated an hour or less.
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Attn: Motorsport Parks Ride Participants
Ellaville Ghost Town Rally attendees who plan to ride the Motorsport Parks Route will pass by Columbus, FL & Ellaville, FL ghost towns. They are located on both sides of the Suwannee River where US-90 crosses. The turn at NE Drew Way, which will take you down to the Hillman Bridge, is marked on the ride map with a camera icon. The following article covers the history of Ellaville.
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Built in 1925 - Hillman Bridge Spans The Suwannee River At Ellaville
Ellaville Ghost Town by Steve Wishard
It was September 8th, 2018. I loaded a tripod, camera and some lenses on my 2017 R1200RT (shown on the cover) and headed west. Changing Gears was still an active blog at the time and I was experimenting with a variety of themes for posts. One of those ideas was ghost towns. I thought it might be interesting to locate, ride to, photograph, and if I came away with interesting photos, research, and write a brief history of each town. Interesting photos would, however, be the key. As a writing professor once accurately told me, “bloggers are photographers who write, not writers who take photos”.
Following a couple of hours searching the internet, I selected Ellaville, FL as my initial subject. The choice, I admit, was made out of convenience more than anything about Ellaville. It is located just 17 miles west of Live Oak, FL, directly on US-90. Or in my case at the time, 95 miles straight out I-10. (2024 Winter Rally Attendees riding the Motorsport Parks Ride will pass by. It’s marked with a camera icon on the ride map in the Winter Rally Program). I didn’t know what I would find when I arrived but I did know I wanted the early morning light for my photos. So I
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departed pre-dawn and opted for the interstate over a more interesting country-road route. In a little less than 2 hours I was approaching the site from the northwest on NE Drew Way. As I entered the parking area, the skeletal remains of the Swuannee River Store were to my right and Hillman Bridge was directly ahead.
ing the trails. I got back to the confluence of the Withlacoochee & Suwannee Rivers, which is where the sawmill was located, but found nothing more than a few foundation stones buried in the leaves. So, as for a ride to a ghost town for blogging purposes, Ellaville was a complete bust. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Ellaville lacks an interesting history. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Ellaville is simply not photogenic.
What I didn’t know then, but would discover as the morning progressed, was that I was looking at all that remained of Ellaville. Later research would also reveal that both Hillman Bridge (1925) and the Swuannee River Store (1928) were actually constructed long after Ellaville’s heyday. However, still blissfully ignorant of the situation, I gathered my camera gear and began searching the area for signs of the town. I spent a couple of hours walk-
As it turns out, Ellaville, along with Columbus, its sister-ghost-town across the river, played a significant role in late 1800’s Florida. Initial review of multiple research sources created some confusion due to conflicting dates. But once I had reviewed them all, events fell into plaee.
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Fortunately, I Got To Hillman Bridge Before The Graffitti Artists. It Is Now Covered With Graffitti
The history of Ellaville is, as much as anything, a significant portion of George Franklin Drew’s life story. He was an interesting man, who’s Civil War Era beliefs and actions were occasionally diametrically opposed. Don’t get me wrong. He didn’t go nearly as far as Oskar Shindler would 80 years later. But he opposed secession, both owned slaves and supported arming them to fight for the Union, and helped a man escape to the north to avoid the Confederate draft, all while providing materials to the Confederate Army.
had amassed a significant fortune and it was during those years that Ellaville was founded and grew into a significant industrial town of 1000 residents. In 1876 Drew sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and was elected Governor of Florida after a highly contentious recount. He won despite the fact that many Floridians knew he was from New Hampshire, was a Unionist in Georgia during the Civil War, and had supported Ulysses S. Grant for President in 1868. The public viewed him as the “redeeming” candidate who saved Florida from the “Radical” Republicans, carpetbaggers who had looted Florida for all it was worth.
In late 1863, Drew was arrested, charged with disloyalty to the Confederacy, and tried before the Confederate Commissioner at Macon. He was imprisoned in Savannah and released in 1864 having been found innocent of the crimes he was charged with. Resentful of the Confederacy, he planned to leave the South while retaining most of his property.
After the Civil War, Drew moved to Columbus, Florida and opened a small sawmill. From his late teens Drew had built steam engines for both industrial and locomotive applications and sawmills were the industrial application he had frequently operated. A short time later he moved his sawmill across the river
Following the Civil War, as he had before and during, Drew continued his many entrepreneurial endeavors. By 1876 Drew
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View Of Ellaville’s Location From NE Drew Way - Nothing Remains But Early Morning Sun Helps
from Columbus and founded the town of Ellaville.
The Florida Railroad built a line to the town that had direct access to the mill.
Around 1870 Drew won a settlement from the United States for cotton which had been siezed by the Union Army during the war. Using that settlement, he partnered with Louis Bucki and together they expanded the Ellaville sawmill.
The Florida Railroad was the first railroad to connect the east and west coasts of Florida, running from Fernandina to Cedar Key. The line later became part of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and, where still in use, is operated by CSX Transportation and the First Coast Railroad. The highway corridor of SR 24, US 301, and SR A1A/SR 200 closely parallels the former Florida Railroad.
The sawmill soon became the largest in the state of Florida with over 1,200 acres near Ellaville, an additional 90,000 acres of timberlands in adjacent areas, and employing 500 people at its peak. Lumberyards and branch offices were established in New York City and Jacksonville.
In 1868, Drew also had a two-story mansion built just northwest of Ellaville surrounded by formal gardens. It was described as having ten rooms with oak parquet floors, a staircase made of imported mahogany, fireplaces adorned with marble mantels, and intricate plaster designs decorated the ceilings. The mansion was one of the first homes in the area to have running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, and a telephone.
The company would eventually expand into turpentine production and railroad car building as well as establish its own private railroad company. Ellaville was soon booming with approximately 1,000 residents and a rail line that ran through the town. In addition to the sawmill and train station, the town had two schools, two churches, a steamboat dock, a commissary, and a Masonic lodge.
After his term as governor, Drew returned to Ellaville for some time before he sold
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George Franklin Drew mansion, ca.1890. State Library and Archives of Florida
his company shares to Bucki in 1883. He moved to Jacksonville where he opened a wholesale hardware business and served as the first president of Jacksonville’s board of trade. He eventually resumed his lumber and mill business establishing the Drew Lumber Company in 1886 in which he owned and operated several mills throughout Duval, Nassau, Suwannee, and Madison County.
mill was shut down. It was a slow death for the town from then on. In the following years, the town suffered from yearly flooding and the onset of war and depression loomed before it. In 1911, the Drew Mansion was abandoned by the Millinor family when six feet of water flooded the home. According to one report, a sharecropping family occupied the first floor for a number of years thereafter but kept the upstairs and basement boarded up to keep the haints out.
In 1893, the Drew Mansion was occupied by Robert Lee Millinor, a businessman and politician who later served in the Florida House of Representatives between 1907 and 1929. In 1895, the Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory reported that Ellaville had a population of 300.
The onset of the Great Depression showed there was no future for the town and the post office closed in 1942. The Drew Mansion was then abandoned and vandalized for many years until it was burnt to the ground in the 1970s.
In 1898, the mill in Ellaville was destroyed in a fire and although it was quickly rebuilt, the yellow pine it harvested was exhausted and by 1900, the
In 1986, the Hillman Bridge, built in 1925 by the Federal Aid Project, was abandoned and replaced by a new bridge across the river.
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Ellaville & Columbus Were On Opposite Banks Of The Suwannee River
All That Remains Of The Drew Mansion
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