In 1916 Atley Benson bought a pre-cut yellow pine house kit and had it carried by riverboat from Jacksonville to the banks of the Indian River, the sort of arrival that felt like a small parade of masts and oars, with the house’s board still smelling of sawdust and salt.

 

That house became the family home of Atley and Clara Christensen Bensen and their children, and it sat where the town’s life brushed against the water and the fishing piers.

 

For decades, the Bensen’s lived a quiet practical pioneer life.   A touch of commercial fishing, growing pineapples, schools run for the kids and storytelling on the porch as launches passed by the cracker cottage. 

 

Florida’s cracker architecture harkens back to the years of early Spanish settlers boasting vaulted ceilings and well-placed windows to combat the summer heat. The houses were built to interact with the environment around them, living close to nature while efficient. The ground is moist and the climate subtropical, so they built the homes off the ground.

 

It became a landmark people pointed to and said, “that’s where the old day stayed”.

 

When the last Bensen generation decided the house should no longer be a private relic, one of the sons donated it to the local historical society in the 1980s.

 

The house was moved to Fisherman’s Landing Park and was restored and opened as a house museum. 

 

Visitors can step inside and see family trunks, photos, and the footprints of early Valkaria life.

 

Today, the Bensen House is more than wood and nails, it’s a little time machine on seven acres of riverfront.  A place where school kids come for field trips trips, historians come to check names and dates and couples come to take wedding vows with the river in the background.

 

If you stand on the small porch and close your eyes, you could almost hear a riverboats’s paddles from a century ago, and imagine how the town looked under a different sky. 

 

The house sits on Route 1, and it’s a nice little  trip back in time.