Blue Spring Landing, Orange City, Florida.

For hundreds of years, the Timacuan Indians made the spring area their home. The spring run, river, and surrounding swamps and uplands, provided food, clothing, shelter and materials for tools and weapons. Snails gathered from the sandbars were a staple food for these people. Over the centuries, the discarded shells formed a massive mound.

Three years after England acquired Florida from Spain, John Bartran, a prominent British botanist, explored the St. Johns in search of resources of value to the Crown. On January 4, 1766, he rowed his boat past sunning alligators into the clear water of Blue Spring. By the mid-1800s, most of the Indians had been killed or driven south and pioneer settlers took their place. In 1856, Louis Thursby, a former gold-rush prospector who turned to growing oranges, purchased Blue Spring and moved into the area with his family. Thursby’s “Blue Spring Landing” became a prosperous steam-boat landing that aided in moving tourists and trade goods around Florida. The Historic Thursby House was constructed in 1872, on top of a Native American shell mound.