DINOSAURS, RUINS, AND GARDENS: The Sugar Mill Hiding in Port Orange

By Staff Reports
Photo: Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens (Family Destinations Guide)
PORT ORANGE — Where else can you walk through 1800s sugar mill ruins, botanical gardens, and life-size dinosaur statues in the same afternoon — for free?
Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens is one of Florida’s strangest and most charming mashups. The stone ruins date to the plantation era, when this was a working sugar mill; today the grounds are a botanical garden run with love, full of shaded paths, native plants, and those famous concrete dinosaurs — leftovers from a 1950s attraction called Bongoland, because of course Florida had a place called Bongoland.
It’s quiet, it’s weird, it’s beautiful, and admission is free (donations keep the gardens going, so drop something in the box). History buffs come for the mill; kids come for the dinosaurs; everybody stays for the shade.
If you’re doing a Daytona weekend, this is the detour that turns into the story you tell when you get home.
Join the conversation: Dinosaurs at a sugar mill — only in Florida, right? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens, City of Port Orange