Chinsegut Hill, at an elevation of 269 feet (82 m), is one of the highest points in peninsular Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

. It is located in Hernando County

Hernando County, Florida

Hernando County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2000, the population was 130,802. The U.S. Census Bureau 2006 estimate for the county is 165,409 . Its county seat is Brooksville, Florida. The majority of the county's population is in Spring Hill, west portion of Hernando...

 north of the city of Brooksville

Brooksville, Florida

Brooksville is an incorporated city in Hernando County, Florida, in the United States. It is the county seat of Hernando County. It is a suburban city included in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...

.

History

The area now known as Chinsegut Hill was acquired from the United States government in 1842. The historic site of the Chinsegut Hill Manor House

Chinsegut Hill Manor House

The Chinsegut Hill Manor House is a U.S. historic site approximately five miles northeast of the city of Brooksville, Florida on Chinsegut Hill. It is located at 22495 Chinsegut Hill Road...

 was constructed in 1849. The property was sold and bought several times in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1904, Raymond Robins

Raymond Robins

Raymond Robins was an American economist and writer. He was an advocate of organized labor and diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia under the Bolsheviks.-Biography:...

 bought the property and gave it its current name of Chinsegut, which is an Inuit

Inuit

The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...

 word for "The spirit of things lost and regained." Raymond and Margaret Robins

Margaret Dreier Robins

Margaret Dreier Robins was an American labor leader. Born in Brooklyn to prosperous German immigrants in 1868, in her teens Robins suffered from physical ailments which left her depressed and weak. She was privately educated. At age nineteen, she began doing charity work at Brooklyn Hospital and...

 extended and dramatically improved the property in subsequent years.

The Robinses also increased the historical significance of the property through their involvement in politics. At Chinsegut Hill the Robinses entertained countless prominent guests including Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 ambassadors, Helen Keller

Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....

, Jane Addams

Jane Addams

Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...

, William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...

, Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

, James Cash Penney, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie, also known as The...

, Senator Claude Pepper

Claude Pepper

Claude Denson Pepper was an American politician of the Democratic Party, and a spokesman for left-liberalism and the elderly. In foreign policy he shifted from pro-Soviet in the 1940s to anti-Communist in the 1950s...

, and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes

Harold L. Ickes

Harold LeClair Ickes was a United States administrator and politician. He served as United States Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, from 1933 to 1946, the longest tenure of anyone to hold the office, and the second longest serving Cabinet member in U.S. history next to James Wilson. Ickes...

. Photographs of scenes and people at Chinsegut Hill in the 1920s and 1930s are available in the Special Collections of the University of Florida George Smathers Library. Using his connections with the Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

 administration, Raymond eventually brokered a deal to donate the Chinsegut Hill estate to the government with the stipulation that the couple be allowed to live there until their deaths, free of property taxes. By 1932, Robins had donated the house and land back to the federal government for research and philanthropy.

Today the original Chinsegut Hill and its historical Manor House

Chinsegut Hill Manor House

The Chinsegut Hill Manor House is a U.S. historic site approximately five miles northeast of the city of Brooksville, Florida on Chinsegut Hill. It is located at 22495 Chinsegut Hill Road...

are within the Main Station of the Subtropical Agricultural Research Station (STARS). This large federal facility with programs in land and pasture management, animal resources and health, and weather observation, is jointly supported and administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS).