Title

The Cedar marker, Cedar Keys, FL (Obverse)

Creator

George Lansing Taylor Jr., University of North FloridaFollow

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

Rights Statement

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/