A Visit to Cross Creek

February 23, 2023                                                        Most Recent Posts
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Silver Springs Florida

In 1928 Marjorie Kennan Rawlings used a small inheritance to buy a 72 acre orange grove with a house and outbuildings sight unseen.

  It has been said that she did it on a whim and it changed her entire life.  She moved here from Rochester New York where she was a journalist.  This place and the local people had profound effect on her.  She talked frequently about feeling as though she had come home when she first walked down this path and saw the property.  She lived here for 25 years.  She and her husband are buried nearby.

This type of decorative metal gate was very common in the first half of the 20th century.  I remember seeing them at the homes of relatives when I was a girl.  I found it great fun to enter the property through this gate.

Rawlings wrote her greatest literary successes inspired by this place and the people living around her.  She is most famous for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Yearling but it is her book, Cross Creek,  about her life on this property and her neighbors, that is my favorite.

This quote from Cross Creek is just inside the gate along the path to the house.  If you are reading on a laptop, you can click the picture to read the quote.  I don’t know if a phone screen will be large enough.  My posts are designed to be read on a laptop.

When Rawlings died in 1953, she gave her home to the University of Florida and in 1970, the state took over management of the property and it became a state park.  Wisely, at her death, her husband had put all of her furniture into storage.  When the home and grounds became a state park, he gave all the furniture that he had stored to be placed again where it had been in the house during her lifetime here.  I have him to thank for how authentic the house still is.

Today there is a parking lot just outside this gate and the path leads to the orange grove and the buildings you can tour.  The tours begin in the barn and are given Thursday through Sunday at  10am, 11, 1 pm, 2 and 3pm.   I spent the entire day here and took 3 of the tours all given by a different guide so it was interesting to see how they differed.  This woman was in period costume for the 10am tour.  She was dressed exactly as my great aunt Carrie was when I visited her in her nearby home in Ocala.

After the introduction in the barn about Rawlings life, we began the tour in the front of the house. We entered into the screened porch area where Rawlings wrote and slept during the heat of the year.

On the right side of the porch was her work table built by her husband. 
The house too reminds me of the one my Aunt Carrie lived in with its french doors uniting the screened porch to the inside..

On the left side was her bed and a sitting area.  The french doors here are closed and there is a second screened door leading outside.

Behind the closed french doors is the “parlor”.  The open door on the left of the fireplace was a closet turned into a liquor cabinet on top and firewood storage below. 

The house has a collection of many copies of her books including foreign editions.

It was fun for me to see this old vacuum in the corner.  It too is just like the one my aunt used to do her “hoovering” as she called it.  The door it is standing next to leads into the first indoor bathroom in this area. 

The guest bathroom actually connects the two sections of the house. See the map later on.  Unless you go outside, you have to walk through it to get to the bedrooms.

The red roses in the toilet are like those that Rawlings put there when she threw a party for her neighbors to christen the first indoor plumbing in the village of Cross Creek.  Ice and drinks were in the bathtub and a tray of glasses on the sink.

You can see the guest bedroom beyond.

Both bedrooms had doors out to the front and back porches so you would not be forced to go through the bathroom if you did not wish to.   They also provided much needed cross ventilation in the heat.  This handmade bed is the oldest piece of furniture in the house.  Visitors who slept here included Robert Frost, Thornton Wilder, N.C. Wyeth, Gregory Peck and others.

I think Rawlings was a lovely young woman.  This is a graduation  picture either from high school or University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I’m not sure which.

Rawling’s bedroom had a second bathroom at the end of the house.  Quite a luxury at the time.  It was added on after the success of The Yearling.

The dining room was set for dinner.  Rawlings loved to entertain her guests with good food and wine.  We were told she always took the chair opposite the window as it looked out on the original outhouse and she didn’t want anyone else to be looking at that while eat.  HA!

She set a lovely table. 

All meals were prepared on the wood cook stove in the room beyond the dining room.

Looks a lot like the farm kitchen doesn’t it Carrie?

I expect in her day the pantry was filled with canning jars and not antique kitchen implements as it is today.

The ice box is just outside the kitchen on the side porch from which we exit the house.

The park has one of the nicest simple brochures I have seen.  Hats off to whoever is responsible.  On one side is this drawing of the house from a birds eye view above.  The brochure’s colors are much brighter than this picture I took of it.  But it will give an idea of the rooms beginning in the lower front door and the summer porch with the two bedrooms in the wing off to the right connected to the rest of the house by the bathroom.   It is definitely an odd layout.  The house appears to have been put together in parts.  That is apparently the way she purchased it.

This is the side porch and door from which we exited to see the grounds.  There is a very small gift shop.

On the other side of the brochure was this map of the grounds.  You can see the entrance gate, the barn where the tour begins, the house, the garden beyond it.  I really love these drawn maps.

Not only do the volunteers lead tours, they do this garden and some of the work on the remaining fruit trees.

Pens for the chickens and ducks.

Part of the orange grove.

Wish I’d asked what kind of chicken is this black one.  We never had any of those.

A  Rhode Island Red rooster and hen.  We had a flock of them at our farm.  They and the Buff Orpington are my favorite chickens.  If you have never had a fresh hen egg, you haven’t really had an egg.  The ones in the grocery are/could be months old.

Chickens are great for working the ground under fruit trees of bugs. .

Also wished I’d asked why she had ducks. Perhaps she was partial to their eggs.

Toward the back of the property was the Tenant house she provided for those who helped her on the farm.

If you look closely, you can see there are two doors.  Each goes into a one room accommodation.

Each room had a bed, table, stove and some chairs.  Not sure if this is what it looked like when people lived here.  I would expect possibly a double bed.

Across the state road, which in her time was sand, is where the rest of the orchard, which she called her citrus grove, was .  It has since grown back to native landscape with a loop trail which I hiked before leaving.

There are still orange trees among the palms and other trees.

I wondered as I left the property if those tall palms were Washingtonian as I’d seen at Koreshan.  They are perhaps three times the height of the house.

I spent a lovely day here and the state historic park would definitely appeal to anyone who has read or wishes to read Rawlings work as much of it is set in this area.  Or if you simply like country life and the time period to which this has been restored which appears to be the 1930’s and 40’s.   I think it is particularly special to me because it takes me back to my great aunt whom I loved dearly and her home.  Neither of which can I visit any longer.

The brochure also had this map of the area showing the house located between the two lakes.

I had forgotten that there is a park and public boat ramp on the property just outside the little entry gate.  My kayak was still at Silver Springs or I would have gone paddling.  Before leaving I took a look around.

Next time!