by businessman and future governor of Florida George Franklin Drew . Drew built a mansion on the western banks of the Suwannee River in

After the Civil War, Drew and his partner Louis Bucki opened a steam-operated sawmill. The mill soon became the largest in Florida, employing more than 500 people.

built a line to the town that had direct access to the mill and soon after, Ellaville was blooming. In the early 1870s the town had a train station, two schools, two churches, a steamboat dock, a masonic lodge, a commissary and a sawmill.