Historic Florida Towns & Places
- citruslandfl
- Nov 13
- 8 min read
Welcome to Historic Florida:
I was a young father of three adorable little girls when I first arrived in the Sunshine State. The year was 1971, and the State of Florida had only recently completed its 1970 census, counting a total of 6.8 million residents. I wrote this blog as a promo for my latest book in the fall of 2025, with the state’s population estimated to be approaching 24 million. Three people live in Florida today for every one person living here 55 years ago when I first arrived.
The difference of a half-century has been astounding. I recall driving from Gainesville to Orlando via US 441 a few weeks after arriving, traveling non-stop from Belleview to Leesburg, slowing only as I approached the only traffic signal at Lady Lake. The sprawling Villages did not yet exist at that time, and there was little to see along this route back then, except for one small mobile retirement home community known as Orange Blossom Gardens, forerunner of The Villages of modern day.
I recall as a resident first of Gainesville cruising the nearby quaint towns and villages of the early 1970s, places such as McIntosh, Archer, Newberry, Williston, New Smyrna, and yes, even Ocala and Gainesville. I remember as if it was yesterday relocating again to Orlando two years later, and of touring its downtown, which back then had a skyline consisting primarily of the CNA Tower. The Mary Hopkins lyrics of 1969 rings true today, for “those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.”
A Custodian of Florida Recollections:
My love of Florida history was born in the 1970s. I almost instantly realized that I had relocated to more than merely a new state, as I had selected a new home in a new state of mind.
To be clear, I do not consider myself an old timer but have benefited greatly from listening to men and women who were real Florida old-timers. I listened in years past, for example, to a gentleman who was approaching his 100th birthday, a man having vivid recollections of his early Florida experiences. He told of his family’s 1935 arrival, and of his recollections of the Labor Day hurricane, a deadly holiday weekend storm that crossed over Orlando after destroying portions of the Florida Keys, including Henry Flagler’s Overseas Railroad. That individual, shown below out front of the Ocoee Railroad depot where he worked as a teenager, is a true Florida old timer. I’ve been enlightened even more recently by another old-timer now approaching his 100th birthday. A Floridian since 1948, he came to Central Florida as a sprite young man and today savors every memory as an old-time Florida resident. He remembers as if they were yesterday his good times and bad, great memories of the 1950s and 1960s.
I cannot consider myself an old-time Floridian when my awesome wife of nearly three decades first arrived in this state as a tyke with her parents. In her younger days she drove her sportster to the Keys, driving across the original Seven Mile auto bridge, a sight I failed to see until 1998, when we crossed a newer, safer bridge, together.
So, I am not an old-timer, especially after listening to the stories told to me by residents of this lovely state prior to explosive growth of recent years. And while I have not been here as long as some, I have been a Floridian far longer than many who now call this state home and who know very little or nothing about its history.
I have been a witness to enormous change, much of which occurring since the mid-1990s, and I have had the great privilege of becoming a Custodian of sort of the memoirs of real-life Florida old-timers. A schoolteacher of 50 years, for example, shared his family history. A lineal descendant of Orange County’s first School Superintendent, I can think of no greater honor as a historian as his entrusting me with 150 years of his family’s memoirs. This true “old-timer”, and others like him, have bestowed on me a duty to be the custodian of splendid tales of yesteryear, and a responsibility to pay it forward, doing my part to keep an accurate history of Florida alive and well.
The Awakening of the 27th State:
Florida’s population had yet to exceed one million citizens as of the year 1900. New York City in the year 1900 had 3.4 million residents, while only 528,542 individuals were residents of 1900 Florida. And as late as 1920, the population was only 968,470, still well shy of a million citizens as Florida prepared to celebrate seventy-five years of Statehood. Not until the short-lived 1920s land boom did Florida finally exceed one million citizens, but it is easy to explain why the Sunshine State failed to grow faster.
Florida, dubbed ‘America’s Paradise’ in the 1880s, failed to attract newcomers because of a lack of reliable transportation. Travel in the state was a challenge, but once railroads began operating in the central and southern parts of the state, a yellow fever epidemic, followed by a disastrous freeze of the mid-1890s, eliminated every benefit the many railroads had provided. Some Florida counties like Orange County had fewer residents in the year 1900 than in 1890.
Wanton Stanley Webb (1844-1906), a publisher of City Directories throughout the United States, released his Florida edition of Webb’s Historical, Biographical & Industrial book in 1885. Featuring 570 Florida post offices as of that time, Webb’s, a book cited often in Historic Florida Towns & Places, provided a brief description of many of the placenames, identified the 1885 postmasters, and for many places, named town founders and prominent citizens.
Florida in the spotlight:
The scarcity of Florida residents in the year 1880 did not mean there was a scarcity of “city builders” In fact, quite the opposite was true. During the decade of the 1880s, hundreds of new towns were laid out in nearly every corner of the state. A sudden growth splurge had begun in the closing days of the 1870s, a growth brought about by a huge influx of Civil War Veterans, Union and Confederates alike.
Thousands of Vets came to Florida to begin anew after surviving a horrible war. They used the Homestead Act to become landowners. Once here, the newcomers planted orange trees, as citrus was being promoted as the fastest and safest way to build personal wealth. By the end of the 1880s, many of these Vets had subdivided a corner of their property into a town, hoping to add further to their wealth by selling hundreds of cordoned-off “town lots” to others who came in search of a piece of America’s Paradise.
There were no railroads south of Gainesville as of 1 January 1880, but by 31 December 1880, Orange County, in the center of Central Florida, had two railroads. The South Florida Railroad had begun serving north to south along the county’s spine, while The St. Johns and Lake Eustis had begun serving The Great Lake Region, much of which became Lake County in 1887. The two railroads opened up a wilderness for taming – providing opportunities for new settlers not only in Florida’s interior, but along much of Florida’s Gulf Coast as well.
A Handbook of Florida, published in 1891 and yet another important tool in researching this book, listed dozens of railroads throughout the State of Florida by that year, detailing named towns each railroad serviced. Said this RRBook1891 of access to Florida; “three express trains run daily each way between New York and Jacksonville.” The vast network of railroads changed Florida almost overnight. A state begging for a transportation system in 1880, had it by the year 1891.
Literally hundreds of towns were founded between 1880 and 1894 but then came the freezes, two back-to-back freezes in December of 1894 and February of 1895 that first destroyed the citrus crop, then the citrus trees. Wealth was wiped out overnight, as were the dreams of Florida’s countless city builders.
Homesteaders fled the state, taking with them much of their history. Many pioneers were forgotten, resulting very often in a complete or partial memory loss of the place names associated with each family. For example, the settlers who established Steinhatchee on Florida’s Gulf Coast founded this town 20 miles north of its present location, a fact we know now thanks in part to Webb’s 1885.
Perhaps they were whistling Dixie!
“You ain’t just whistling Dixie” is a phrase suggesting one is naïve and irrational, leaning toward fantasy or wishful thinking. It is said that the origin of this phrase dates to the song “Dixie,” popularized by the Confederates during the Civil War. Were the land speculators and developers of the 19th century whistling Dixie while dreaming of Florida as “America’s Paradise?”
A hundred years before I first stepped foot in Florida the population had yet to top 188,000. Divided into 39 counties then, only 85 people lived in a 7,200 square mile county named Dade. The county is but one-quarter of its original landmass now, yet Dade County is the 3rd largest county in the state with nearly 2.7 million residents. And the current population of the entire 1870 Dade County landmass (being (Broward, Palm Beach, and Dade) now exceeds 6.1 million people.
America’s Paradise of the 19th century was indeed lost, largely due to the 1894-95 freezes, but Florida was reborn in the 20th century as new “town builders” decided the freezes had been nothing more than a fluke. The 20th century rebirth began with the return of the orange industry, only this time, rather than the arrival of railroads, it was the personal automobile that made all the difference. The dreamers and schemers of promoting Florida development became energized with talk of a Dixie Highway. Were they once again whistling?
The Roaring 20s brought yet another land boom, good times that by 1927 were crushed not by a freeze, but by a Great Depression. Land speculators had again established new towns and expanded existing cities, only to lose everything again when buyers failed to make good on their debts.
The Land of Flowers, how Florida was first marketed, has had more than its share of ups and downs, with each swing being the result of flawed marketing hype. Prior to the advent of home heating in the north, fireplaces had carried the brunt of keeping northerners warm during the cold winters. Florida offered a respite from the cold, plus the promise of an opportunity to become richer by taking advantage of the warm climate to grow oranges. But as the 19th century came to an end, the advent of gravity heat from furnaces began competing with the need to travel south during the winter months.
Sanibel on the Gulf and Boca Raton on the Atlantic Coast began not as a haven for beach goers, but rather as farmland. The freezes of 1894-95 chased Florida farmers further south, and Sanibel began farming vegetables while Boca Raton became a pineapple farm.
Historic Florida Towns & Places
Available in Paperback and Hardcover
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Much of Florida’s old-world charm vanished over the decades due to early founders leaving in the aftermath of financial disasters. But knowing the history of our sunshine state can be rewarding to every resident of modern-day Florida, because our Paradise, in large part, was built by former residents of every State in the Union. And yes, a few from nearly every corner of the earth as well.
Historic Florida Towns & Places is an encyclopedia of the people and events of 615 placenames, the greater part of which are Florida towns the State’ populus live and work in today. Each placename includes a “Legend,” like the one below, which details the reference materials used to compile the featured placenames history. The next page explains the meaning of each letter and abbreviation.
Visit Amazon.com to review the complete library of Florida history by Richard Lee Cronin.
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