As you step back in time from the Dudley Farm Visitor Center, you follow the old road to Gainesville. To the north, are open pasture and croplands, but before the Dudley family settled here from South Carolina, this land supported longleaf pine and wiregrass. These pine trees supplied the lumber for the farm’s 18 buildings and provided the posts and rails for fences. Across the field is the 100 year old rail fence that surrounded the original log home site of Phillip Benjamin Harvey Dudley (P.B.H., Sr.). He established Dudley Farm before the Civil War.

His son, P.B.H. Dudley, Jr. developed the 1880s farm that can be seen today. Spanning one hundred and fifty years, three generations of the Dudley family lived and worked this piece of land which became a significant crossroads community by the 1880s. Dudley Farm represents the evolution of Florida farming from the 1850s to the mid 20th century.