Enslaved Africans constructed the bottom 5-6 rows of bricks of the sugar train in the 1850s, the only remaining evidence of their work here from the time when the area was Spring Garden Plantation from the early 1800s until the Civil War. Slave labor also built the original sugar mill building in the 1830s, later rebuilt around 1900, as well as docks and storage buildings. The top section of bricks was added in the 1870s, and in 2011 park staff carried out stabilization work by adding missing bricks and mortaring the joints to preserve this part of the park's history.