Discover New Smyrna Beach
New Smyrna Beach's colonial story and its surviving downtown represent different periods. Andrew Turnbull established a plantation colony in 1768 using indentured workers from Mediterranean communities, including Greeks, Italians and Minorcans. Crops included indigo, rice and cotton. Disease and severe conditions undermined the venture, and in 1777 colonists petitioned the governor in St. Augustine for release from their indentures. Many then moved north.
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That history should not be confused with the age of every building in the present historic district. National Register documentation identifies much of the district's surviving built environment with development from 1885 to 1935. Commercial blocks, houses and public institutions record a later town that grew through different economic circumstances.
Archaeological remains provide a separate connection to the eighteenth-century colony. The nomination distinguishes those traces from the later commercial and residential streetscape. This helps avoid reading the entire center as either a surviving colonial village or an exclusively twentieth-century beach town.
The city's preservation material and the historic-district nomination offer complementary ways to explore the place. The first introduces the people and labor system behind the early settlement; the second explains the later architecture and growth visible in the downtown landscape. Both periods matter, but they require different kinds of evidence.
Sources
- City of New Smyrna Beach: Historic Preservation: https://www.cityofnsb.com/1408/Historic-Preservation
- City of New Smyrna Beach: Historic District National Register Application: https://www.cityofnsb.com/DocumentCenter/View/18290/1990-New-Smyrna-Beach-Historic-District-National-Register-Application