Ellaville was founded in 1861 by George Franklin Drew a successful businessman and future governor of Florida.

Franklin decided to build a mansion on the western banks of Suwannee River.

[citation needed] He and Louis Bucki built a mill that employed over 500 people and was one of the largest in Florida at the time.

Soon after the town was booming and in its heyday in the early 1870s had a train station, two schools, two churches, a steamboat dock, masonic lodge, commissary and a sawmill.

Both rivers flooded and with the onset of the Great Depression, there was no future for the town and the post office closed in 1942.