Native Americans visited and used these springs as long as 6,000 years ago. In the early 1800s, settlers built sugar and cotton plantations that were sacked by Seminole Indians during the Second Seminole War. By the 1880s the springs had become a winter resort, and tourists were promised "a fountain of youth impregnated with a deliciously healthy combination of soda and sulphur."

In April 1864, a Union army expedition of almost 1,000 men from the 17th Connecticut Infantry, the 75th Ohio Mounted Infantry, and the 35th U.S. Colored Infantry, under the command of Brigadier General William Birney, moved into Volusia County to disrupt Confederate supply lines and destroy supply sources.

One of the objectives of Birney's Raid was Spring Garden Plantation (now De Leon Springs State Park) where three cotton gins and a gristmill with four grinding stones for producing corn meal had been constructed. The mill and gins were all powered by an undershot water wheel supplied by a large natural spring.

The Union soldiers destroyed the plantation and the gristmill machinery was thrown into the spring. The water wheel was reconstructed in 1999 and is now part of a restaurant at the park.

www.floridastateparks.org/deleonsprings

Information Provided by the Florida Department of State.