When Tom and I first got to Fort Frederica National Monument, back in 2017, Tom and another volunteer built a palmetto hut.  Tom had done a lot of research and gotten permission to build the replica hut outside the grounds of the historic area.  He and Randy Benefield spent several weeks collecting the materials and putting the thing together.

That palmetto hut turned out to be a wonderful thing for interpretation at Fort Frederica.  Kids loved to walk through it.  We could talk about the settlers and how they built palmetto huts when the first arrived.  The soldiers with families stayed in them, sometimes for years at a time.  Tom would joke that it was available as an Air BNB rental, with the emphasis on the air.  That hut stood up through three hurricanes and lots of wind storms.

But Hurricane Helene finally did the palmetto hut in.  Some of the supports had started to rot and it blew over with the wind gusts in September.  Fortunately, a Boy Scout had already made an application to rebuild the palmetto hut as his Eagle project.  Tom didn’t think it needed to be rebuilt – until it fell over.  Then, of course, it needed rebuilding.

Jimmy waited until January to begin, so that Tom could help and supervise.  Jimmy recruited his dad, an uncle, and a couple of other men and scouts to help him with the project.  Over the course of several weekends, they rebuilt the hut.  The hut took more spars and palmetto branches than Jimmy was expecting, but over time they filled most of it in.  It was not done when Tom and I left in February, but it was mostly done when we got back at the end of the month.

This last Friday, Tom and the maintenance volunteers here at Fort Frederica finished the palmetto hut.  Denise and Bob cut a bunch of palmetto branches.  Tom and Marty wove them in, trying to fill all the holes.  Even though the contrast between the green and brown branches looks funny right now, the hut is in much better shape.  In addition, Tom and Marty made the bed shorter.  Then they strung it so that it could support weight.  Now it is sturdy enough that kids can climb on it.

Once again, we have a palmetto hut and rope bed in the living history area.  And, once again, it is doing its job of helping history come alive for the people that visit the park.  It was a great resource to show our 400 visitors on Saturday.  Visitors get a much better idea of how the early settlers lived when they first arrived at Fort Frederica.