by The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park is located in Cross Creek, Florida, and it’s where you can tour the cracker-style home where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author lived for 25 years.
The homestead is currently on just 8 acres, but it abuts public land of another 115 acres, much of which had been part of the 72-acre Rawlings property.
Rawlings and her husband Charles purchased the home and orange grove in 1929, sight unseen! Marjorie had previously visited the area and had fallen in love with it, calling it “an enchanted land.”
The Rawlingses, both writers, hoped to develop their writing careers, with the orange grove providing supplemental income.
They knew nothing of growing oranges or a more rustic lifestyle, having come south from Washington, D.C.
Charles quickly grew disenchanted with the relentless Florida heat, however, as well as the “simple life,” and the troubled 14-year marriage came to an end.
Marjorie wrote 33 short stores between 1912 and 1949, in addition to several novels and cookbooks. Most famously, she wrote The Yearling, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 and which made her famous when it was turned into a film in seven years later. Her writing was deeply influenced by her local surroundings in her Cross Creek home, focusing on rural themes and using local residents as inspiration for her characters.
Perhaps she took it a bit too far when she wrote her 1942 book, Cross Creek. Rawlings used names of real people and real stories from their lives. A neighbor sued her for invasion of privacy; Rawlings lost the case, though the fine was only $1. It took a large emotional toll on Rawlings (the case dragged on for a few years), who was blindsided by the lawsuit.
Rawlings married Norton Baskin (1901–1997), a hotelier, in 1941, after which she split her time between her Cross Creek home and the hotel in St. Augustine.
Marjorie bequeathed the property to the University of Florida, who took it over upon her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953 when she was just 57 years old. Marjorie had taught creative writing at the university.
Baskin, who survived her by another 44 years, made sure that the home they shared was preserved in her honor; it features mostly original furniture and furnishings. The home today is set up as it was in the 1930s.
After our tour of the home and site, we went “up the road a ways” to the Historic Yearling Restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was founded in 1952 and specializes in Southern Cuisine. We had conch fritters as an appetizer, and Doug had a gator po’ boy while I had shrimp and grits.
