He wrote a journal describing their encounters with local tribes, and their journey up the coast to St. Augustine.

A man known as Trapper Nelson homesteaded on the banks of the Loxahatchee River after coming to the area in the 1930s, living off the land trapping and selling furs.

The United States Army established Camp Murphy, a top-secret radar training school, in the area that is now the park, in 1942.

It also has the Elsa Kimbell Environmental Education and Research Center, with exhibits about the park's natural and cultural history.

Jonathan Dickinson State Park was used to film the first segment of the second episode of BBC's Walking with Monsters, set in Late Carboniferous Kansas.