Harvesting redcedars for pencil manufacturing, along with pines and baldcypress for lumber, was vital to the Cedar Keys and the early development of North Florida in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1849, German entrepreneur J. Eberhard Faber arrived in New York seeking splinter-free wood for pencils and found abundant redcedar in Florida’s Gulf Hammock and Waccasassa Bay area between the Suwannee and Withlacoochee Rivers. He bought land and timber, floated logs to the Keys, and shipped them to the family factory in Germany. In 1858, he built a slat mill on Atsena Otie, also called Depot Key, and shipped slats instead of logs. In 1862, he built the Faber pencil factory on New York’s East River and supplied it with slats from his Cedar Keys mill, aided by the 1861 completion of David Levy Yulee's Florida Railroad connecting the Keys and Fernandina Beach. The Eagle Pencil Company followed by building its New York factory in 1868 and supplying it with redcedar slats from its own mill built there in 1876. This industry flourished on the Cedar Keys until local resources were depleted and the slat mills were destroyed by a hurricane in 1896. Other forest products also strengthened the local economy: yellow pine and baldcypress lumber were milled on the Keys, cabbage palms were harvested for dock pilings locally and as far as Key West, and from 1910 to 1952 the Standard Manufacturing Company developed a process, established a mill, and produced brush fibers and Donax whisk brushes from young cabbage palms. Palm fibers were shipped across the nation and as far as Canada, Germany, and Australia. The rich and varied forest resources of the Cedar Keys and surrounding area, together with the entrepreneurial energy of many people, were central to the settlement and development of the Cedar Keys, providing homes and livelihoods for thousands, products used around the world, and a lasting legacy for Florida.