Mala Compra in Palm Coast, Florida, preserves the remains of a plantation within one of northeastern Florida’s largest plantation systems. Bought by Joseph Marion Hernández in 1816, it operated mainly as a slave-based cotton plantation until 1836, with a house, detached kitchen, work buildings, quarters for enslaved laborers, and productive fields, livestock, and orange trees. During the Second Seminole War, United States troops repeatedly occupied and fortified the property, and Seminoles burned it in 1836, ending it as a working plantation. Archaeology since 1999 has identified the house and kitchen and recovered more than 14,000 artifacts, illuminating both the plantation’s operation and Hernández’s wider place in early Florida history.