Green Springs passed through many owners after Cornelius Taylor first claimed the land in 1842, but among the most notable were the deBarys, New York wine merchants who wintered near Enterprise beginning in the 1870s. European-born Frederick deBary and his son Adolphe built a showy vacation house at the center of their vast hunting estate and also acquired Green Springs and its well-known shell mound. Most deBary lands lay west of this area in what is now the city of DeBary, and family members and guests traveled widely to hunt quail, fish, and explore on horseback and in wagons, making Old Enterprise a natural destination for outdoor recreation. Yet the family did not preserve the landscape intact: in 1885 a visitor found them clearing and draining the land for orange groves, and reported that two-thirds of the shell mound had been carted away for fertilizer and walks.