In Port Orange south of Daytona Beach, the Sugar Mill Gardens (950 Old Sugar Mill Rd.; 386-767-1735) contain the ruins of the sugar mill and sugar processing equipment from the 1820s Dunlawton Plantation.

New Smyrna Beach was a bold new agricultural colony founded in 1767 by Dr. Andrew Turnbull. It was to be the largest British colony in the New World, growing indigo, rice, sugar, corn and fruits. Turnbull recruited more than 1,200 Greek, Italian and Minorcan colonists, but the colony folded in 1777. The survivors went to St. Augustine where many of their descendants live today. In New Smyrna's historic downtown, you'll find the 1901 Conner Free Library now a historical museum (201 Sams Ave.) that tells the story of the colony. The Old Fort Ruins and the Old Stone Wharf (Riverside Dr.) are the remains of the Turnbull colony. Canal Street is the location of one of Turnbull's irrigation canals.

Just west of town off SR 44 is New Smyrna Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site (600 Old Mission Rd.), another early American sugar plantation destroyed in 1835.

U.S. Hwy. 1 south along the coast is a nice alternative to I-95. In Titusville, originally a winter tourist center on the Indian River, the North Brevard Historical Museum (301 S. Washington St.; 321-269-3658) offers local history in the historic part of downtown. The Valiant Air Command Museum (6600 Tico Rd.; 321-268-1941) contains memorabilia of America's aviation heritage, including aircraft. Veteran tour guides tell war stories.

In Cocoa, the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science (2201 Michigan Ave.; 321-632-1830) has permanent and changing exhibitions relating to regional and Florida history, including a recreation of the archaeological dig at Windover, where 7,000-year-old prehistoric Indian remains were found.

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