The Keystone Heights Heritage Commission hosted over 100 fourth graders from Keystone Heights Elementary School to teach the students about the town’s history.
During the April 19 field trip, students viewed artifacts from the Keystone Inn, watched reenactor John Zieser talk about Fort 11, a wooden structure built between Lake Keystone and Lake Geneva during the Second Seminole War, watched the city council reenact the purchase of an abandoned restaurant, and learned about the city’s Moon Tree and the high school’s early years.
John Zieser, dressed in historical attire, describes Fort 11: a little-known outpost just west of present-day City Hall that guarded the road between Fort Shannon in Palatka and Fort King near Ocala. Zieser explained one of the biggest problems for soldiers facing Native Americans in north Florida. He said a soldier’s muzzleloader had an effective range of 50 yards and took 20 seconds to reload. He added that Seminole Warriors routinely waited for soldiers to fire their weapons and then rushed the soldiers while they were attempting to reload, forcing the soldiers into hand-to-hand combat.Heritage Commission member Deirdre Murphy reacts to a student’s correct answer to the question of what is the nickname of Pennsylvania. Murphy then connected the name of the street South Lawrence Boulevard, Keystone Heights founder John Lawrence’s home state of Pennsylvania, and the name of the city.Heritage Commission member Karen Nagle explains to students how the seeds of the city’s Moon Tree orbited the moon and returned safely to Earth. She said the seed traveled within the personal patch of Astronaut Stuart Russo, who was in the forestry service before becoming an astronaut. Nagel added that the Sycamore seeds rode on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.Heritage Commission member Helen Hersey holds up Keystone Heights High School’s first yearbook, which was published in the 1950s. She added that she is in the book. She said that when she attended Keystone Heights High School, she had 10 classmates, the school had four teachers, and the school’s mascot was not the Indians but the gophers.Keystone Heights Council members (L-r) Elston Kussler, Christine Thompson, Nina Rodenroth, and Tony Brown reenact their vote to purchase the old China Chef restaurant at the corner of Lawrence Boulevard and Walker Drive. Mayor Rodenroth explained the process council members went through in reaching their decision and used the event as a case study of how city government works.
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