This piece (Figure 4: Night Heron) sat for several years before I finished it. I developed it to a point and wasn’t sure how to complete it, so onto a shelf it went. It’s funny how inspiration strikes. I was rummanging for paper when I uncovered it and BANG! – the solution was plain as day. After I put on the final varnish, I noticed this little place called Orange Bluff. It’s by the Heron’s left foot. Orange Bluff is in Nassau County, Florida north of Jacksonville along the St. Mary’s River I was curious to see what’d become of the place and how it might have grown as the map was from 1919.
Checking Google Earth, I discovered it had largely been grown over. Here’s the link. You can see the echoes of the old bones of Orange Bluff.
I was curious as to what had happened so I reached out to the West Nassau Historical Society. Happily, within days I received a reply from John Hendricks . Orange Bluff was part of a James Rouse Spanish Land Grant. Below is a grab of the grant that John passed along. As you can imagine, timber was the commodity in the 1700’s. Orange Bluff was founded with a saw mill and eventually a railroad was built to transport the lumber from the interior to Jacksonville. The buildings noted on the maps were the homes or other structures that supported the mill.
From John – Saw mills dotted the river banks of the St Marys for centuries. In 1874 a canoeist names Nathaniel Bishop paddled by Orange Bluff and met the Davis family who lived there. Davis claimed he had been living there for 20 years which put him there at 1854. Davis and brothers owned a huge swathe of land there at Orange Bluff. They then moved river down to Crandall in 1870s/1880s. They were related to Jackson Mizell who owned a saw mill in Kings Ferry. The Orange Bluff mill still operated under Davis name for a long while.
Part of me was happy to see the area become overgrown and had not become some subdivision. We’re losing too many of our wild, green spaces in the name of profit. In most cases, when these places are gone there’s nothing left of the bones of what was once there…just scribbles on a map.
This piece is called Figure 4: Night Heron. Old bones indeed.
