The mill ruins here are made of coquina, Spanish for “tiny shell.” Quarried locally and elsewhere in Southeast, it contains mollusk shell fragments and quartz sand, bound together by calcium carbonate. Centuries after the Spanish first used coquina in Florida, frontier Americans chose this building for their sugar factory. Although it appears durable, cut coquina is porous and surprisingly delicate. In the 1830’s this mill had protective coatings of white lime plaster, and its roof sheltered valuable machinery from the West Point Foundry of New York, a pioneering industrial manufacturer in the United States. After the Seminoles’ 1835 raid, the ruins endured years of rugged weather, destructive vegetation, climbing visitors, and misguided masonry patching. In 2007, preservation specialists properly repaired and stabilized the old coquina walls. Even so, the site remains sensitive to human disturbance. Fires set by the Seminoles probably caused the sugar factory’s white plaster coating to fall off, though artist John Rogers Vinton still found some light areas showing in his early painting of the ruins.