Tall Timbers Research

Photo courtesy Vivian Young, Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board

County Road 12
Tallahassee, FL 32312

Contact Person:
Phone (850) 893-4153/Fax (850) 668-7781

Hours of Operation:
Monday-Friday 8:30-4:30

Tours:
Second Sunday each month 2:15 p.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Admission:
Free

Significant Dates:

1895	New York entrepreneur Edward Beadel acquired land for Tall Timbers and constructed the Beadel House.
1919	His nephew, architect Henry Beadel, acquired Tall Timbers, redesigning the house to its current configuration.
1924	The "Cooperative Quail Investigation," initiated by Beadel and other plantation owners, provided for extensive research on the Bob-white quail by Herbert Stoddard.
1963	Henry Beadel established Tall Timbers Research Station.

Special Events:

October

Tall Timbers Open House

Description:

Because of its internationally recognized role in fire ecology and land conservation, 2,800 acres of Tall Timbers land is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. For decades, scientists have conducted experiments on the land to determine the impact of fire on wildlife population and vegetation. With its 1895 Beadel House, historic outbuildings, lush vegetation, and sweeping panoramic view of Lake Iamonia, this estate is one of Leon County's best kept secrets.

Facts and Figures:

In antebellum days, Tall Timbers was part of Woodlawn Plantation. One of the largest plantations in Leon County, in 1860 it produced 225 bales of cotton and 7,000 bushels of corn. After the Civil War, the property was sold several times, and tenant farmers paid rent to work the land.

Edward Beadel, whose family made its fortune in New York real estate, acquired 2,800 acres of land known as Hickory Hill in 1895. Beadel built the eight room hunting lodge still on the property. He continued to rent land to tenant farmers, and developed hunting trails to hunt quail and dove.

In 1919, Edward Beadel's nephew, Henry, acquired the property and renamed it Tall Timbers. An architect, Henry redesigned the lodge to its present configuration. His avocation, however, was natural history. Retiring from architecture in his mid-forties, Henry Beadel spent his remaining four decades devoted to wildlife photography and research at Tall Timbers.

As part of a new forest conservation program in the 1920s, federal government agents convinced many property owners throughout the southeast to stop annually burning their forests. Beadel and others in this region complied. Soon their land was choked with underbrush, and the quail population declined.

Beadel joined with other area plantation owners and the US Bureau of Biological Survey in 1924 to sponsor a scientific investigation of the decline of the quail population. They hired Herbert L. Stoddard, Sr. of the Milwaukee Public Museum to conduct the study, known as the "Cooperative Quail Investigation." Under Stoddard's direction, Beadel participated in some of the experiments on the effects of fire on wildlife at Tall Timbers.

Stoddard's report, published in 1931, established him as an international leader in modern game management. He established that the annual fires played a critical role in the maintenance of the quail population.

Beadel was instrumental in the founding of the Cooperative Quail Study Association which from 1931-1943, with Stoddard as director, assisted numerous hunting plantations throughout the southeast with land management.

Beadel, along with Stoddard and Edward Komarek, continued scientific experiments related to land and wildlife management, and in 1963, established Tall Timbers Research Station Foundation to continue the tradition of scientific investigation.

Due to its internationally significant role in fire ecology and land conservation, a portion of the Tall Timbers estate (2,800 acres) were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.