Preview
Creation Date
1-1-2011
Description
The Cedar Keys : Pencils, lumber, palm fibre and brushes marker, Cedar Keys, Fl. (Obverse)
This marker is located in Levy County in Cedar Keys, Florida.
The marker on the text reads as follows: (side 1)
"Harvesting red cedars (a form of juniper) for pencil manufacturing, along with pines and bald cypress for lumber, was of great importance to the Cedar Keys and the early development of North Florida in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1849, German entrepreneur J. Eberhard Faber (1830-1884) arrived in New York hunting splinter-free wood for pencils. He found abundant red cedar in Florida's Gulf Hammock/Waccasassa Bay area between the Suwannee and Withlacoochee Rivers. He bought land and timber, floated logs to the Keys, and shipped logs to the family factory in Germany. In 1858, Faber built a slat mill on Atsena Otie (Depot Key), directly south of this location, and shipped slats instead of logs. In 1862, he built the Faber pencil factory on New York's East River (near the current site of the United Nations) and supplied it with slats from his Cedar Keys mill, a practice facilitated by the 1861 completion of David Levy Yulee's (1810-1886) Florida Railroad connecting the Keys and Fernandina Beach. "
Sponsored or placed by: The Florida Society of American Foresters and the Florida Department of State.
Latitude, Longitude
29.13526944, -83.03638889
Recommended Citation
Taylor, George Lansing Jr., "The Cedar marker, Cedar Keys, FL (Obverse)" (2011). George Lansing Taylor Collection Main Gallery. 4890.
https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/historical_architecture_main/4890
