TAVARES FIRE SPREADS, and a Tug & Grunt Railroad folds!

A FLORIDA TOWN NEARLY WIPED OUT BY FIRE: Last week’s installment of this 2016 Summer Series told of litigation resulting from an April 9, 1888 fire, a lawsuit that exposed historical facts about three (3) TAVARES trains, each operated by a consortium known as Peninsular Land, Transportation & Mfg. Co.

Now an exceptional Winter Garden railroad museum, this building once received passengers and freight for the Tavares & Gulf Railroad.

The 1888 fire started when a spark from a train’s engine destroyed a locomotive owned by Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railroad. The damaged locomotive however was but a tiny part of a tragedy that struck Tavares that April 1888 morning.

“Jacksonville, April 10, 1888: Sparks from a railroad engine set fire to a saloon at TAVARES, and the entire building was quickly in flames. A strong west wind prevailed and the fire spread rapidly, and building after building succumbed. By noon every business block but two was in ashes. Among those burned were the PENINSULAR HOTEL, two other hotels, the Tavares Bank, Post Office and DEPOT. No fire apparatus was in the place, nor any means to fight the flames, and the dry buildings burned like so much tinder. Twenty firms were burned out, and the loss will be fully $180,000.” Fort Worth, Texas Gazette, April 11, 1888.

Tavares, central Florida’s land based railroad hub, still reeling from Florida’s horrific nightmare of 1887, was completely destroyed by the fire of 1888. Largely uninsured, a dream city first envisioned by Alexander St. Clair Abrams, would never fully recover.

Abrams was a resident of Orlando as well as a Lake Eustis landowner at the birth of central Florida’s railroad boom. While Boston investors began laying down track to run from the port town of Sanford to the county seat at Orlando, dreamers such as Alexander St. Clair Abrams had gone to work planning their very own trains. One of three planned by Abrams began as the Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad.

Florida’s third largest body of water, Lake Apopka, was centrally located between Orlando and Tavares, and the Abrams group plan was to run two of their three railroads along both the east and west shore of that lake.

The Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad intended to connect their land based hub at Tavares with Titusville, on the Atlantic coast. A plan for a second train, originally named Tavares, Apopka & Gulf Railroad, was to link Tavares with the Gulf of Mexico.

Fondly nicknamed Tug & Grunt in later years, the Tavares, Apopka & Gulf Railroad was organized October 10, 1881, and seems to have been cursed from its outset. During its early years, towns of ASTATULA, WEST APOPKA (later FERNDALE), MONTVERDE, MOHAWK, and MINNEOLA were each established along the west shore of Lake Apopka. Planned to enter CLERMONT, the train was to continue westbound to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now referred to as FERNDALE, this one-time WEST APOPKA Ghost Town on served by the Tavares, Apopka & Gulf Railroad.

The TA&G advanced south from Tavares very slowly, and by the time it reached Clermont, existing track belonging to a competitor skirted the shoreline of Lake Minneola. Having been denied permission to cross their competitor’s track, the train was denied access to Clermont, and ended its westward push toward the Gulf of Mexico at this point.

Between Montverde and Mohawk, WAITS JUNCTION was established, allowing the TA&G to change its course, and head east into Orange County. The change in direction set sights on the up and coming Osceola County town of KISSIMMEE CITY.

By 1887, as stories of Florida’s Yellow Fever Epidemic began spreading in the North, the Tavares, Apopka & Gulf Railroad was planning a route to pass through KILLARNEY, OAKLAND, and the brand new town of CRESTON, before proceeding to Kissimmee.

Yellow Fever cast a dark cloud over Florida, and resulted in many newly founded Citrus Belt towns becoming Ghost Towns. One railroad after another began to fail. The fever scare still afflicted the State’s economy on the day the locomotive spark ignited a fire that burned most all of TAVARES to the ground.

By 1890, while in receivership, the failed Tavares, Apopka & Gulf Railroad was purchased by a 79 year old New Yorker, Peter A. H. JACKSON. Sons Henry and Stephen managed the railroad, extending track from OAKLAND into WINTER GARDEN, and changing its name to Tavares & Gulf Railroad.

Track was eventually extended to OCOEE, and the Tavares & Gulf Railroad continued operating well into the 20^th century, although all too often jumping track.

Stay tuned for a new RAILS & TRAILS, and another GHOST TOWN or two, returning Wednesday, August 10, 2016. This summer series is sponsored by ‘Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains,’ a historical novel based on real-life Central Florida pioneers, and one historic 1894-95 devastating event that forever changed the Orange Belt.

WIN 1 of TEN FREE autographed copies of GHOST TOWNS & PHANTOM TRAINS at GOODREADS.com – winners to be drawn by Goodreads on August 27, 2016.

This summer, Central Florida Railroad Museum, in historic Winter Garden, the Winter Garden History Center, and Bookmark it Orlando book stores, have each priced this book at a Rails & Trails special price of $15.00.

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