DELAND’S RIVER COUNTRY / BRYN RAWLINS & FAMILY
Highland Park Fish Camp:
A family legacy, still in good hands.
I am friends with Bryn Rawlins, and I admire her a great deal. Highland Park Fish Camp gives that admiration a larger setting: a family, a stretch of Florida water, and a legacy that still has people doing the work.
Highland Park Fish Camp is a family-owned fishing, boating, and camping business near DeLand on the Norris Dead River. The Rawlins family has operated it since 1962. Today, Captain Bryn Rawlins helps carry that history forward alongside longtime guide Captain James Hillman.
I am glad to call Bryn Rawlins my friend
I want to begin with Bryn, because my affection for Highland Park Fish Camp has a person in it.
Bryn Rawlins is my friend. I think she is a wonderful human being, and I admire her very much. That matters to this story. When I write about the people who make a local business worth understanding, I want there to be room for plain personal regard, said without dressing it up.
I am glad to know her. I am also glad that a place with this much family history has her helping carry it forward.
A family legacy can sound like something a person simply receives. In practice, it also becomes something they have to do. The doors still need to open. Guests still arrive with questions. A place that holds memories for other people needs somebody willing to look after its present.
That is part of what I respect about Bryn’s place in this story. Her connection to Highland Park reaches backward through her family and outward into the people encountering the camp now. She is part of its history while helping determine what the next visitor will experience.
My admiration begins with the person. The family business gives it another dimension.
A family name with a place behind it
The camp’s own history begins in 1962, when Derris Rawlins purchased 12 acres at the end of an old logging canal outside DeLand. The business started with a small bait shop. His sons Rick and Ron carried it forward, and a third generation followed.
The same account identifies Bryn as Rick’s daughter, a licensed captain and seventh-generation Floridian, operating the camp alongside Captain James Hillman. Those details put people around the familiar phrase family-owned. There are names, relationships, and practical knowledge behind it.
I think the most interesting part of a family business is often the transfer that cannot be recorded on a deed. A person can inherit buildings and equipment. They also inherit a collection of expectations: what customers remember, what a place has meant to the family, and which parts of its character would be missed if they disappeared.
That inheritance deserves room to change. The next generation has to run a business in its own circumstances, with its own decisions to make. Treating family continuity as a requirement to repeat everything exactly would make it difficult to keep the place useful.
The Rawlins family’s published account describes additions such as camping, cabins, guides, and rentals over the years. The camp has continued by finding ways to welcome people while retaining a recognizable relationship to the water.
Bryn belongs to that continuing work. The family story has reached her without stopping there.
The boat they built together
There is a detail about Bryn and her father that gives the word legacy a much more personal scale. In an excerpt from the Daytona Beach News-Journal preserved on the camp’s media page, Bryn recalled Rick arriving with a pontoon-boat frame. Father and daughter built a houseboat from that beginning and travelled the St. Johns together in 2015.
I find that a beautiful part of the family’s story. The river was their working landscape, and they still made something that would let them experience more of it together.
Building a boat asks for a different kind of attention from buying a ticket. There are decisions to make before the trip becomes possible. A bare frame gradually becomes something that can carry people. The shared project becomes part of the journey before the journey begins.
What moves me in Bryn’s public recollection is the relationship it describes. A father had wanted to make the journey, and his daughter got to help turn it into time they actually spent together.
Family history becomes especially valuable in moments like that. It is more than a date attached to a business name. It contains things people made, places they went, and the ordinary pleasure of having someone beside them.
A photograph can preserve a boat. A story like this preserves why that particular boat mattered.
The knowledge lives beside the tackle
Highland Park’s description of its tackle shop includes locally selected equipment, live bait, coffee, porch rocking chairs, and fishing memorabilia. The practical supplies and the social setting belong together.
A tackle shop can help a person narrow a decision. An aisle full of products is one kind of choice. A selection made for the water nearby, supported by someone familiar with it, is another. The local context can be the most useful thing in the transaction.
Bryn’s own published fishing forecast for Coastal Angler offers a small example of that knowledge in public. The older column discusses seasonal conditions and the choices anglers make around them. I read it as evidence of a longstanding relationship with the subject, rather than as current fishing advice.
The distinction matters because rivers change. Expertise includes paying attention again, rather than assuming yesterday’s answer will keep working indefinitely. A person who knows a place well has more context for noticing when something is different.
I admire businesses that make that kind of knowledge approachable. A newcomer should be able to ask a basic question without feeling that they have failed an entrance examination. An experienced angler may want a more detailed conversation. Both have a reason to value people whose working day remains connected to the same water.
The rocking chair is a good detail, too. It suggests that the visit can have a little room around the purchase.
The camp depends on a river beyond its property
The marina’s account of its location places the camp at the end of a logging canal connected to the Norris Dead River and the wider St. Johns system. Lake Woodruff and its surrounding refuge help define the landscape people come here to experience.
A modest departure point can open onto a much larger world. The camp supplies a place to begin, prepare, and return. The water carries the guest beyond the scale of the property itself.
That relationship also means the business’s future is connected to conditions outside its fence line. Habitat and water quality matter to the experiences anglers hope to have. A family’s long history on the river gives concern for its future a particularly immediate meaning.
Local reporting on Mighty River Recovery has described Highland Park Fish Camp’s involvement in that restoration effort’s beginnings. I appreciate the connection between enjoying a place, making a living beside it, and taking an interest in what will sustain it.
The nearby Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge belongs to the same larger story. A visitor may begin with a desire to catch a fish or spend a quiet morning outside. The landscape has many interdependent parts supporting that possibility.
Give the next generation a place to begin
Highland Park’s campground information describes a straightforward place to stay, with access to the camp’s boating facilities and a children’s fishing pond. There are several ways for people to form an attachment here, from a serious fishing trip to a family’s first attempt at a simpler weekend.
I like the possibility that a place with old memories can keep producing new ones. The next child does not need to understand the entire family history before enjoying the pond. The history matters because people have carried the place far enough for that child to arrive.
In writing about businesses built around the water, I am interested in helping the real character become clear. Here, the substance is already present: the Rawlins family, generations of local knowledge, and a camp whose purpose remains closely connected to its setting.
Those are things worth explaining carefully. Visitors should be able to understand what kind of experience awaits them and why the people behind it care. Current availability, facilities, and conditions are best checked directly with the camp.
For me, the story returns to Bryn. I admire her as a person, and I respect the place she holds in this family legacy. It means something to see a friend helping continue work that began long before her and can matter to people long after today’s visit is over.
I hope readers get to know Highland Park Fish Camp with that human story in mind. There is a river here, and a remarkable family history. There is also Bryn, a friend I am very glad to have, helping give the next chapter its life.
Rob Urban
Sources and further reading
- Highland Park Fish Camp: current family story and operations
- The Rawlins family's account of the camp
- Camp media archive, including Bryn's 2015 trip with Rick
- Bryn Rawlins's archived Coastal Angler forecast
- Tackle shop and local knowledge
- Marina and river connections
- Campground information
- Reporting on Highland Park and Mighty River Recovery