Current Projects

The property is about 22.50 acres with about 1,000 +/- of St. Johns River frontage. It is my understanding that this location was called “Botts Landing” (The father bought the property from the Botts descendants) and was one of the stops of the paddle wheel river boats. There is still some of the pilling along the river for the wharf used by the river boats. Predating me there was also a large cypress warehouse on the property that was used to store the merchandise, either before of after loading it on/off the river boats. Someone had taken the old warehouse down and used the lumber to build a citrus/fern packing shed on the property and we took it apart to build the barn that our group subsequently removed when the pool was taken out.  Around 1952 the father built a 20’ X 40’ (7’ at deep end) swimming pool and used an adjoining 8’ flowing artesian well (currently capped with a valve) that would fill the pool in a couple hours with no pump involved. I don’t know that the pressure is that great these days. Originally there was a home at the locations of the swimming pool and the flowing well turning a water wheel that ran an electrical generator which provided electrical power for the house. The SW portion of the property had (before one of the freezes) a temple grove and they had a large water wagon that they filled with the flowing well to water the young trees. Before that grove there was an old fernery, citrus grove with assorted fruit trees (great pears). There is another smaller flowing well at the center/north of the property and there are (were) other flowing wells on some of the surrounding property. The 8” well is registered with St. John’s Water Management District, but not the smaller one in the pasture (I believe). I believe this is one (perhaps the only) large, undeveloped, upland parcel of property with river frontage between Blue Springs (perhaps even farther towards Lake Monroe) and Lake George.