Felburn Park was once a dolomite mine where workers extracted rock used to enrich farm soil. As digging continued, miners struck a groundwater reservoir, and spring water began filling the pit, so they pumped out the seepage until the mine closed and the pumps were shut off, allowing the pit to fill with water. The former mining pit is now known as Phil's Lake, honoring the late Phil Felburn, a local philanthropist and founder of the Felburn Foundation. Developers later proposed turning Phil's Lake into a marina by connecting the freshwater lake to the salty Cross Florida Barge Canal, but opponents feared saltwater would contaminate drinking water, and leaking seawater had already been a main reason sea-level ship canal efforts in the 1930s failed.