Putnam Lodge - Florida Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Putnam Lodge, built in 1927-28 by the Putnam Lumber Company, is part of a bygone era in Florida's forestry history. Here, beside the Old Dixie Highway, Putnam Lodge, part of the "company town" of Shamrock, accommodated tourists, transients and company executives and clients. The lobby and dining room of the 36-room lodge were decorated exclusively with the still preserved, artfully stenciled "pecky cypress", a now virtually extinct lumber product. In its day, the Putnam Lumber Company, founded by William O'Brien, a timber magnate of Irish decent, and associates including E.B. Putnam, employed hundreds at its two state-of-the-art sawmills in Shamrock. The mills annually produced and shipped worldwide millions of feet of "deep swamp tidewater cypress" and "dense Florida longleaf yellow pine" lumber, products that are now rare because the old growth trees are gone. Shamrock provided its residents and employees with comfortable homes, a commissary, a store comparable to "any city department store", two schools, two hotels, the Shamrock Dairy Farm, and an ice plant producing 18 tons of ice daily. The lodge is representative of a time of local timber supremacy and economic prosperity.

Marker Number: F-515 Date: 2011 County: Dixie Marker Type: Roadside Sponsored or placed by: The Florida Division of the Society of American Foresters, Friends of Putnam Lodge, and the Florida Department of State Website: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   07/28/2011 Markerman62 visited it