The park is near the ruins of the McIntosh Sugarworks, built around 1825 and used as a starch factory during the American Civil War.

It is the closest state park to Cumberland Island National Seashore and it is adjacent to the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay.

[2] The earliest residents of Crooked River State Park were the Guale and the Timucua Indians who were pushed out and moved southward in the 1700s.

Once a Royal Land Grant, Crooked River State Park was confiscated at the end of the revolution and owned by Robert Montfort.

Evidence of this plantation era and earlier times remain on the park’s grounds including old bottles, planted pines, and oyster shell middens found along marsh edge on east side of park.