Here are five facts about Milldale: A long-forgotten industrial mill town born from Panama Park’s Cummer Lumber Company.
1. A community built to support industry
In 1896, recognizing the value of Florida’s cypress and timberlands, Wellington Wilson Cummer established the Cummer Lumber Co. at Sandfly Point. The sawmill quickly grew into the Jacksonville area’s largest employer. With business thriving, the adjacent area developed into Milldale, a community providing housing, shops and other amenities for the mill workers.
Following Cummer’s death in 1909, his sons Arthur and Waldo took over the company. While Arthur and Ninah Cummer’s Riverside estate would later become the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, the former mill site took on new industrial roles. It was repurposed into a drydock yard for the George D. Auchter Co. and, in 1939, a wallboard manufacturing plant for the U.S. Gypsum Company. Utilizing the original railroad for transporting raw materials, the 42.8-acre USG facility grew into a 700,000-square-foot industrial operation with its own paper mill to produce chipboard paper exclusively for USG’s gypsum products.
Today, USG stands as the nation’s largest distributor of wallboard and the leading manufacturer of gypsum products. Among its most recognized brands are SHEETROCK, FIBEROCK, and Tuff Hide. The Jacksonville plant is one of USG’s largest, producing more than 23 million sheets of wallboard annually. It also serves as a key distribution center for products including DUROCK cement board, FIBEROCK gypsum fiber panels, wallboard accessories, and dry setting-type compounds. From Jacksonville, these products are shipped nationwide as well as to markets across Central and South America.
2. A Buffalo, New York, connection
The heart of Milldale was formally laid out as the Charles E. Bell Subdivision, named in honor of local real estate developer Charles E. Bell. Born in Buffalo, New York, on January 11, 1870, Bell was the son of James S. Bell, who had been affiliated with the firm of Pratt & Co. in Buffalo. In 1880, the elder Bell relocated the family to Jacksonville to pursue opportunities in real estate. Following in his father’s footsteps, Charles E. Bell also entered the real estate business…