Franciscan missionaries from Spain, the first Europeans to encounter the Sea Islands, brought sour Seville oranges to the coast in the late 1600s and planted them in the vicinity of their missions. Over the next couple of centuries, some of these survived, and one population evolved into the Sapelo Sour Orange. After the Civil War, the Gullah-Geechee people protected the trees and used them in all sorts of applications, from medicine to marmalade. They faced extinction in the early 2000s, but an effort to save them and propagate more individual plants has been quite successful.

Hog Hammock Historic District, National Register of Historic Places