Around c1830, in what was then Lowndes County, Joshua Lee built the first grist mill at this location. He owned five and one half land lots, comprising 2.690 acres, which were not yet free of Indians. He built a low-level dam across a stream flowing through his property, and the water flooded the land around ancient cypress trees where a natural pocosin existed, probably as a result of tidal action of the ocean thousands of years earlier. The mill gave farmers a place to grind grain and gin cotton without traveling a great distance. Located on the old stagecoach road from Waycross to Thomasville, it became a gathering place for farmers and merchants and developed into a trade center. A post office established in 1838 gave rise to the town of Alapaha, which changed to Milltown in 1857 and later to Lakeland in 1925. The property's legacy is the remembrance of the pioneers who came to this land, created a community, and of their descendants who wish to protect the land.