Mala Compra Plantation: Where the Seminole War Came Ashore
Near St. Augustine, Florida
Just off the coast highway in Flagler County, the Mala Compra Plantation Archaeological Site preserves the ruins of a sugar and cotton operation that was destroyed in the Second Seminole War. The plantation was established in the early eighteen thirties by Joseph Marion Hernandez, a Florida planter and political leader who grew sugar and cotton along Pellicer Creek. In December of eighteen thirty-five, in the opening weeks of the war, Seminole warriors burned the plantation to the ground.
Hernandez and his workers fled by boat. The ruins, a coquina sugar mill and scattered structural foundations, were never rebuilt. The name Mala Compra is Spanish for bad purchase, a phrase the land seems to have earned.
The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and sits inside Princess Place Preserve, where you can walk among the coquina ruins and see why the Spanish called this coast by a name that combined beauty with regret.
