A couple of miles north of Mayport in Jacksonville, down a winding dirt road shaded by primeval foliage stands a grand, whitewashed plantation home. More than 250 years ago, the Kingsley Plantation’s front door was the Fort George River, an estuary of the St. Johns River, and to this day the marshland water still laps at the front yard once only accessible by boat.
The plantation is just a small part of the 46,000 acres that make up the National Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve. Its stately home, originally on 1,000 acres of land, was built on the backs of African slaves and changed hands for many years after the British took control of the Spanish territory of Florida in 1765.
But the plantation that has existed since before the American Revolution is in danger of losing a battle with time. Park ranger Emily Palmer said even though the plantation home and slave quarters survived last year’s devastating Hurricane Irma unscathed, it’s in dire need of maintenance. So much so that rangers have to limit the number of people allowed inside the home at once.
“We have to limit the amount of weight in that building as a means of protecting it,” she said. “I want to see it protected. I want to see it standing.”
The plantation changed hands throughout its history, but enslaved blacks were always responsible for planting and harvesting indigo and sea island cotton — 100 pounds each per day — she said on a Friday tour as she guided visitors by the tiny, still standing slave quarters.
“You can feel what they might’ve felt by wandering these grounds on a hot August day. By feeling the sharp edge of that sea island cotton plant, you can imagine what their lives were like and you can connect to those people often left out of the narrative and left out of the story,” she said.
Palmer, who calls herself a “protector of history,” said the land is more than a gorgeous photo opportunity or a nice place for a picnic, it’s an incredible teaching tool.
“We try and express this to school children using the interpretative garden. We grow sea island cotton here, we cut it, and we have the kids participate in tactile learning … they actually feel how sharp the husk is, how long the fibers are, they pick the cotton out and then they gin it by hand,” she said.
Maintenance Deferred
Timucuan has $3.8 million in deferred maintenance, and that’s just a drop in a $262 million maintenance backlog bucket for Florida’s 11 national parks. And that’s just a small portion of the more than $11 billion in deferred-maintenance costs for national parks around the country, the majority of which stem from crumbling roads, buildings and parking lots.
Right now, the National Park Service drafts a budget request that Congress and the president must approve, but isn’t enough to cover needed repairs to the country’s 400 National Park Service-administered sites.
The National Park Service narrowly escaped steep budget cuts proposed by President Trump earlier this year, but the backlog of deferred maintenance has forced the service to hike entrance fees for 117 destinations by between $5 and $10, according to the National Park Conservation Association. The Department of Interior, which oversees the NPS, originally proposed nearly tripling entrance fees for the 17 most visited parks like the Grand Canyon but backed off after public outcry.
Proposed Solutions
A bipartisan group of lawmakers have gained some traction with a measure that would use profits from oil drilling on public lands to help fund some of the backlog, but environmentalists have opposed it for incentivizing further energy exploration in national parks, and the bill doesn’t guarantee an annual windfall as appropriations would be tied to the fickle energy market.
However, another bipartisan effort, co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Rutherford, R-Jacksonville, would pay for the deferred maintenance over 30 years by creating a dedicated fund that would grow by tens of millions of dollars every year until 2047.
“We have to maintain these buildings. As you heard Ranger Palmer talking about — the restrictions on the big house here — not being able to allow too many tours because of the structure — those are the things that we need to help the National Park Service with,” he said. “There are so many people that want to take advantage of these and we want them to be able to do it safely. A lot of our parks around the country, it’s a safety issue.”
Rutherford also said the parks and other sites the Park Service manages are integral to the economy, citing last year’s 330 million recreational visits — 11 million in Florida alone — as one reason why the bill makes fiscal sense. He also cited a Pew Charitable Trusts-commissioned study that found that more than 110,000 jobs could be created with national park infrastructure spending.
What’s Not Addressed: Sea Level Rise
The $11 billion in deferred maintenance costs don’t include what many park officials say is also sorely needed — new defenses against rising seas.
A recent investigation by our partner, the Florida Times-Union, found that the Army Corps of Engineers has never issued a long-term study of the effects of manmade changes to the St. Johns River. The report also found deep-water dredging and channel straightening have made the traditionally brackish and lazy river more like the Atlantic Ocean, exacerbating flooding and the effects of sea-level rise.
Still, Rutherford supports further deepening portions of the river for larger ships. He acknowledges sea-level rise is a problem, but said he believes the Army Corps has thoroughly studied the effects of river deepening and has determined it’s safe.
“I still support dredging the river for the port,” he said. “Sea level rise is something that we’re going to have to address all over this country. It’s real. It’s happening. Now, why it’s happening is a question,” he said.
For now the, the Kingsley Plantation, last held by Zephaniah Kingsley and his stolen Senegalese wife Anna Madgigine Jai, has not buckled under time. Neither has it been swallowed by the sea. But Kingsley descendent Peri Frances said it deserves more care and deference than it’s getting now.
“To me this place is really, really important. This is Plymouth Rock. This is Ellis Island,” she said.
