Before sugarcane was grown commercially in South Florida, northern entrepreneurs began planting cane on newly drained, nutrient-rich land in Central Florida. By 1888, Hamilton Disston, a Philadelphia saw manufacturer who had acquired 4 million acres of Florida land, had planted over 1,000 acres of sugarcane and built a cane mill capable of processing 372 tons of cane a day near what became the city of St. Cloud. Across East Lake Tohopekaliga from that mill was the newly platted English settlement of Runnymede, where in 1885 Beauchamp Watson built a large hotel and, amid interest in sugarcane and other crops, attempted to establish an agricultural school there. At the same time, a government sugar experimental station was started at the site to grow and study different varieties of sugarcane and test sugar content, yields per acre, and related data. A cane grinding mill and a syrup evaporator, or condenser, were built there for these tests. The evaporator had a brick base or pedestal, a firebox for heat, and a series of long shallow metal pans used to reduce water from cane juice in making syrup. For unknown reasons, the station operated only briefly and very small amounts of cane were grown. The project was abandoned, and the mill and metal from the evaporator were sold for scrap, leaving the brick base behind. In 1994, the Jacob Summerlin Camp #1516 Sons of Confederate Veterans proposed a War Between the States battle reenactment in Chisholm Park, which included the former site of the experimental station, where the brick base still stood after almost 110 years. Because Runnymede had not flourished and survived mainly in legal descriptions, the nearest still-viable community, Narcoossee, supplied the name that led to the annual "Battle at Narcoossee Mill." In recent years, the camp erected a fence to help protect the site from disturbance.