Jonathan Dickinson State Park

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Editor's note: This story, which originally ran in the Palm Beach Post in July 2017, has been edited for clarity.

A very special place, just north of Jupiter in southern Martin County and spanning roughly 10,500 acres, has not one but three different links to history.

It's Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

In 1696, Dickinson, a Quaker merchant, was on a business trip from his Jamaica plantation to Philadelphia. His ship, Reformation, ran aground in a storm near what's now Jupiter.

The chief eventually allowed the party to leave on what became a grueling and perilous 230-mile trek by boat and on foot through open ocean, swamps, beaches and jungles before the group arrived in the settlement of St. Augustine.

Dickinson would go on to print his journal, "God's Protecting Providence, Man's Surest Help and Defence." It was intended to be a testament to God's "deliverance." But it also has become an invaluable look at South Florida's now vanished early Native American tribes.

Jump ahead two and a half centuries — July 1942, to be exact. A half-year had passed since Pearl Harbor had flung America — and Florida — headlong into World War II.

When the military came to Florida looking for land for installations, the Reed family of Jupiter Island turned over 1,000 acres between Hobe Sound and Tequesta, with the provision the land be restored to its natural state when the Army was done with it.

The Army also bought about 17 acres from the pioneer DuBois family for $1,000.