How much did I love this tour? Marjorie Kinnan-Rawlings, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Author (The Yearling), first saw the area when she accompanied her husband from Rochester, New York in 1928 to visit his two brothers in Cross Creek, Florida. She’d had a lifelong fascination with wilderness areas and loved this part of the country. She bought a parcel of land and set out to earn a living from her orange grove.
Her property consisted of the orange grove; a barn; the farmhouse (the oldest section having been built in 1884); an outhouse; a garden that provided her only source of fresh vegetables; and a tenant house for her employees. All of this bordered on Cross Creek and two nearby lakes.
Most of the people I know would think you’d have to be crazy to give up city life for an isolated country life. I’m sort of drawn to it. That wasn’t always the case. I grew up in a small Texas town where I spent my days playing in creeks, bicycling all over town, visiting relatives who lived at the end of unpaved roads amidst tall pine trees, and capturing everything from snapping turtles to fireflies. In my college days, I yearned to see the world and thought big city life would somehow bring sophistication. I got my fill of the fast life and found myself craving quiet country again. Needless to say, I loved the Kinnan-Rawlings house.
Dressed in period clothing to give authenticity to the setting, this is Carmen, the Park Ranger.
She suggested I take the path past the chicken coop and follow it down to the lake. She said there was a bench where, if I sat very still and waited, I might end up surrounded by deer.
There’s a sign along the path that contains a quote from Kinnan-Rawlings about her love of the country life at Cross Creek. And she was right. There’s just something magical about tall, stately trees, rustling animals, and even oranges tossed out along the path. My favorite places are always the ones with trees and animals. And those oranges? As it turns out, they are among the fruits that deer love the most.
I sat very still and quiet for about 20 minutes. Perhaps it was the time of day and the noise of tourists tromping around nearby, but I was not graced with the presence of deer.
I gave up and returned for the tour of the farmhouse. Our guide, 81-year-old Donna, was the best part of it. Personable and full of interesting tidbits you wouldn’t find online or in a glossy pamphlet, she said that every December, she makes homemade jam from one of Kinnan-Rawlings’s recipes on that original wood-burning stove.
The house has three sections and is a board and batten construction. This open design, with its copious windows and doors, allows breezes to flow through in hot weather. The original section was built in 1884.
When Marjorie Kinnan-Rawlings died, her husband put everything into storage – pots and pans, paintings, furniture, knickknacks – everything. When the house and surrounding area was declared a national park, the local woman who’d worked for Rawlings for decades was located, and she knew exactly where every piece had been in the house. Because of Rawlings’ husband’s preservation efforts, 95% of everything in the house is original.
From the porch where Kinnan-Rawlings wrote The Yearling, watched the changing seasons and enjoyed the cardinals in the nearby birdbath, she invited her guests to pass through into the living room. On the left of the fireplace was a closet she converted into a liquor cabinet of sorts. She would tell her guests she stored firewood on the bottom and firewater on the top.
Joining the original portion of the house to the first added wing is a small library area. This leads into the guest bedroom and bathroom. Many well-known people slept in this room – poet Robert Frost, author Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), playwright Thornton Wilder (Our Town), artist N. C. Wyeth and actor Gregory Peck (who starred in the movie version of The Yearling). The bed in the guest room is the oldest piece of furniture in the house.
At the very back of this wing is Kinnan-Rawlings’ bedroom and bathroom. Although there is still an outhouse right near the back door, she was the first to have indoor plumbing installed in Cross Creek.
Then a short, covered walkway leads to the 2nd wing of the house. This includes a dining room, pantry and kitchen. Kinnan-Rawlings was known to serve fried fish on her mother’s china, and at her dinners, she always sat facing the view of the outhouse so her guests wouldn’t be subjected to it. A prolific cook, Kinnan-Rawlings spent countless hours perfecting recipes on the kitchen’s wood-burning stove and eventually put out a cookbook called Cross Creek Cookery.
Behind the main house, near the path leading to the lake, is the tenants’ house.
I love a good tour that transports me to another place and time and makes it easy to imagine what life might have been like. This is one of those tours. I think maybe next time I’ll get there in the afternoon, take the last guided tour and then venture toward the lake in the waning hours of the day. Who knows? Perhaps twilight will bring that yearling I longed to see.
- 18700 South County Rd. 325, Hawthorne, Florida
- 352-466-3672
- http://www.floridastateparks.org
- Hours: Open daily 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM but access to the farmhouse interior is by guided tour only Thursday-Sunday at 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM. Note: The house will be closed August & September 2024 for archival cleaning.
- Parking is $3 / The tour is free
- Not wheelchair accessible
Lisa Browder 
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