Washington Oaks Gardens State Park combines a historic garden estate with the preserved ecology of a northeast Florida barrier island. Native Americans once used this area for hunting and fishing, and after European settlement the land passed through several owners and agricultural uses, including ownership by surveyor George Washington, a relative of the president. In 1936 Louise Powis Clark Young bought the property as a winter home, named it Washington Oaks, and created the formal gardens, citrus groves, and house that define it today. After Owen D. Young died, she donated the property to Florida in 1964 on the condition that the gardens be kept in their existing form.