BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—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 6 field trip, students watched a video about what school was like in the early 1900s and learned about the town’s beginnings from Mayor-elect Nina Rodenroth. They also visited the city’s welcome center and viewed artifacts from the Keystone Inn, heard about Keystone Heights’s past association with the Chautauqua education and social movement in the early 1900s and watched reenactor John Zieser talk about Fort 11: a wooden structure built between Lake Keystone and Lake Geneva during the Second Seminole war.
Event volunteer Christine Arnold said Fort 11 was a little-known outpost that guarded the road between Fort Shannon in Palatka and Fort King near Ocala.
Arnold added that during the war, which lasted between 1835 and 1842, Lake Geneva is labled as Lake 11 on maps and Lake Keystone was known as Soldiers Pond.
Principal Beth Turbeville said the state requires fourth graders to learn about Florida’s history, so the field trip to the beach pavilion and surrounding area fit well in the curriculum.
“This is a really good hands-on opportunity for them to not only learn about a part of Florida history,” she said, “but learn about their own community so that perhaps when they get older, they can give back as well.”
