In Green Springs Park, some watercourses are former orange grove ditches, but below the overlook a natural creek drains both the ditches and water from the area's springs. One named spring disappeared after hotel guests began exploring there in the 1840s, yet the terrain remained much as it was then: low and wet where the stream runs to Lake Monroe and higher and drier where visitors now enter the park. Much of the area is hardwood hammock, with live oak, magnolia, hickory, cedar, cabbage palm, and pine, but the land was heavily used. Enterprise founder Cornelius Taylor, once a U.S. timber agent, probably harvested live oaks for shipbuilding in the 1840s, and his African-American slaves cleared difficult ground and raised cotton, tobacco, and corn despite harsh conditions. Later owners devoted large areas to orange groves. In 1845, visitor Whitfield Brooks admired the location, the mineral spring, and the view from Cornelius Taylor's inn, but thought so poorly of the agricultural land that he wrote he would not give Major Taylor one dollar per acre for it without the beautiful sheet of water in front of the house and the climate.