"Sugar Mill Gardens - the Sugar Mill" Port Orange Travelogue by grandmaR

Mill ruins from garden

Sugar cane stalks were crushed by giant rollers (above) to extract the juice.

Sugar Mill

In the first mills, oxen provided the power to turn the rollers, but by the 1830s, steam engines became available and were used at Dunlawton Plantation

Closeup detail of engine

The juice was boiled in large open kettles still here (below) and dipped kettle to smaller kettle as the syrup thickened.

Sugar kettles

It was then put into hogsheads and set aside so that the molasses, which is the byproduct, could drain out leaving the sugar.

Sugar Mill from the gardent

The resulting sugar was not the white sugar we use today. It was sticky, moist brown sugar.

Mule drawn cane mill

After the Civil War, manufacturers began to refine sugar into white crystals for general use.

Road and sugar mill chimney from the parking lot

Today, more sugar is produced from a field of sugar cane than the early mills produced by using improved methods in modern sugar mills.