The park consists of the antebellum mansion developed by its first owner, Major Robert Gamble; a 40,000-gallon cistern to provide the household with fresh water; and 16 acres (65,000 m2) of the former sugarcane plantation.

At its peak, the forced-labor farm included 3,500 acres, and Gamble likely enslaved more than 200 people to work the property and process the sugarcane.

In 1925, the mansion and grounds were purchased by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and donated to the state as a memorial to Judah P. Benjamin, who served in three Cabinet positions under Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the American Civil War.

[3] In 2002, the State of Florida acquired the property that holds the ruins of the plantation's sugar mill, one of the South's largest, and added it to the historic park complex.

[4] The coastal area was inhabited for thousands of years by varying cultures of indigenous peoples, who left huge shell middens as evidence of their reliance on seafood.

At the close of the Seminole War in 1842, the United States opened the Florida frontier to settlement by European Americans.

[5] Other sugar planters from South Carolina and established slave states soon joined him along the rich Manatee River valley on the western coast of today's central Florida.

The sugar planters enslaved many people to clear the lands; plant, harvest and process sugarcane; and build the plantation houses, mills, and outbuildings.

Ample supplies of oyster shells were found in middens present on the sites of former Native American coastal villages.

Next to the house is a covered, 40,000-gallon cistern with a wood-shake roof, which Gamble had built to supply the household's fresh water needs.

Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State, took refuge here during May 1865 while making his escape from Federal troops following defeat of the Confederacy.

In 1923 the Judah P. Benjamin Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) began to raise money to rescue the home from destruction.

The UDC arranged in 1937 for the installation of a memorial plaque to honor the service of Judah Philip Benjamin to the Confederacy.

In January 2010, Janet Snyder Matthews, a historian at the University of Florida and the former associate director of the National Park Service, led a working seminar at the plantation.