Tall Timbers historic Beadel House was lost in an early morning fire on March 16.
The two-story house built in 1895 by Edward Beadel ignited after a lightning strike during a severe storm moving through the Red Hills. It housed numerous artifacts from our organization’s history and four staff offices.
We’re thankful for the efforts of the Tallahassee Fire Department in removing a handful of artifacts from the house and hope for the speedy recovery of a firefighter who was injured.
The Beadel House was an important site in the lives of people in the Red Hills and visitors to Tall Timbers over the years. The outpouring of support and shared memories has been comforting and many have asked how they can help.
If you would like to help Tall Timbers build back, online donations are open. Your support will provide Tall Timbers with the funding to rebuild the facilities needed for our growing organization. For questions regarding giving please contact Development Director, Crystal Rice (850) 545-2162 or cdrice@talltimbers.org.
Monday’s fire was a surreal event, but we know that we live and work in a fire driven ecosystem.
What organization knows better that fire, particularly ones sparked by lightning, is a natural occurrence and is a vital part of our local ecology.
“The Beadel House was where the idea for Tall Timbers was created so we are saddened by its loss,” said Tall Timbers CEO and President Bill Palmer, “However we will press forward and continue to further our mission of conservation and ecological health through the use of prescribed fire as Mr. Beadel envisioned eight decades ago.”
The Beadel House represents an important period of history in the Red Hills of Florida and Georgia when wealthy northerners began to flock to the south after the Reconstruction Era, purchasing large tracts of land for recreation, particularly quail hunting.
It also became a key meeting place where the modern-day ethos of prescribed fire as a scientific subject and land management tool took shape.
The original section of the house was built by Edward Beadel, a New York architect who was independently wealthy and who came south every winter to hunt after he purchased and renamed the surrounding property Tall Timbers.
His nephew Henry would later add to the house and live in it full time during the 1920s. Henry and other Red Hills landowners formed the idea to create an independent research station to address fire ecology’s role in wildlife management and forestry. We can only imagine the conversations and ideas shared on the Beadel House porch over these many years.
Kevin McGorty, who worked at Tall Timbers for 28 years and helped establish the organization’s land conservancy, was instrumental in getting the Beadel House on the National Historic Registry in 1989.
As McGorty watched what remained of the Beadel House burn, he noted the house’s significance to the entire region, which is ongoing today.
“This was the heart and soul, if you will, of the Red Hills, the genesis of saving the Red Hills and researching the Red Hills and prescribed fire,” he said. “So, to lose this goes beyond the bricks and mortar of the building.”
See local news coverage of the fire below
WCTV
Tallahassee Democrat
WFSU
WTXL
