Union Cypress Sawmill

The Union Cypress Co. was Melbourne’s first big industry, bringing employment, growth, and development to the region. Its cypress and pine sawmill was a three-story, all-steel structure about 50 by 150 feet, powered by five 150-horsepower boilers, and its power plant supplied Melbourne’s first electricity. The company’s railway to Deer Park provided the first direct route across the St. Johns River for 80 miles south of Enterprise. From the cypress and pine holdings of George W. Hopkins, the operation could produce daily some 40,000 feet of lumber and 45,000 shingles, with the timber holdings valued at more than $2 million in 1911, and lumber not used locally was shipped out on the Florida East Coast Railway. The company-owned town of Hopkins included about 69 buildings in its industrial, residential, and commercial areas. After the large mill burned in August 1919, it was replaced by a smaller pine mill. Construction of a new cypress mill began in late 1924 but stopped after Hopkins died in January 1925. Foshee Manufacturing Co. leased the idle mill and railway in March 1928, but despite abundant timber remaining, it closed in late 1932 as the lumber market declined during the Great Depression. Fewer than a handful of the original buildings survive today.

Melbourne, Florida · United States