Part 2: Elizabeth of Palm Springs, Seminole County, FL
A Seminole County Ghost Town today, PALM SPRINGS began as a railroad hub in 1888 Orange County, a city developed by Elizabeth McClain Saunders-Massey.
“As we passed through Palm Springs,” wrote Amos Root, a passenger on one of six
daily trains passing through Elizabeth’s 1895
Palm Springs, “I got just enough of a
glimpse to feel I wanted to stop
there.” Amos did return, but curious central Floridians might find
themselves asking today, “returned to
where?”
1890 Orange County Map: (A) Orange Belt
Railway from Sanford; (B) Florida Midland Railway from Longwood,
now SR 434; (C) Hoosier Springs Grove & Estate; (D) Intersection of I-4 & State Road 434 today; (E) Lake Brantley.
Elizabeth came to Florida in 1887 because of her son’s deteriorating health. Setting out from Toronto,
Canada, the Widow Saunders arrived in the widely-promoted land of health,
wealth and sunshine, a land I call CitrusLAND. Timing is crucial to appreciate
Elizabeth’s legacy, for women of the 19th century were typically
confined to the difficult task of homemaking and child rearing. The business
world was a male thing. But in 19th century central Florida women,
such as Widow Saunders, were breaking with tradition.
A biography of Elizabeth
M. Saunders-Massey, as our Palm Springs developer was known in 1915, was included with a collection of
biographies of Orange County settlers, and began by stating: “Usually men are the earliest settlers.”
Even in 1915 the author understood the
significance of her achievements, a lady who lived in the “mansion on the hill-side and orange grove known as the “Hoosier Springs Grove.”
Our story of Elizabeth of CitrusLAND began at a place
called Hoosier
Springs.
1885 Plat of Hoosier Springs (Partial)
Widow Saunders
bought the 161 acre homestead of Ingram & Gertrude Fletcher, closing
on her purchase January 28, 1887.
The land itself had been sub-divided in 1885
as both a personal residence on the Wekiva River and a town of “Hoosier Springs” on the south side of
the planned Florida Midland Railway
track. (Hoosier Springs, in the 20th century, became SANLANDO
SPRINGS.)
But Hoosier Springs
of 1887 had not been a success
story. Elizabeth’s deed spells out the town’s lackluster development. Excluded
from all 161 acres was a one acre church lot; a 0.87 acre town lot sold to
brothers Frank & William Baker;
and the standard right-of-way path allowing two railroads to cross over the
property. Most all of the town first platted by the Fletcher’s remained unsold
and undeveloped.
“The mansion on the
hill-side and orange grove known as “Hoosier Springs Grove,” as the CitrusLAND
home of Elizabeth Saunders was
described, had been the winter residence of a one-time prominent banker from
Indianapolis, Ingram Fletcher. As
his native Indiana was the Hoosier State,
hence – Hoosier Springs!
Bordering the less than successful town of Hoosier Springs was
yet another tiny village, a much older want-to-be town known as Altamont. First envisioned in 1874 by a New York doctor, Washington Kilmer, this neighboring
town was no more a success than Hoosier Springs.
Had Elizabeth looked across her 1887 landholdings, she would have seen the unfulfilled dream towns
of two
city planners, two adjacent towns having a hundred plus vacant town lots each,
acreage crisscrossed by two railroads. Surrounded as well by
countless citrus groves though, the potential of her landholdings likely seemed
endless.
Within five months of closing on her land, the Widow Saunders
revised the Altamont plat, merging
Kilmer’s city with the old Hoosier
Springs town she had acquired from Ingram Fletcher. Elizabeth however dressed
up the layout of the town by adding a dozen ‘Town Squares’, each crossroad
square called out by such names as Gardenia
Square, at the junction of Saunders and
Cambridge Streets; or Oleander Square where Orange Avenue crossed Toronto Street.
A portion of 1887 revised Altamont Town Plat
A month later, June 14, 1887,
Elizabeth sold her first town lot. Lot 18
of the new Town of Altamont fronted Railroad
Street, on the east side of the Orange Belt Railway and Florida Midland
Railway crossing. The Baker Brothers,
lot number 22, was on the west side
of the crossing, where they operated a general store and railway depot. The
buyer of lot 18 was William Massey,
the man Elizabeth would soon marry. (William died soon after they married, and
so Widow Saunders became Widow Massey.)
ALTAMONT could
boast of location, location, location, but so too could a neighboring city
three miles east. That town, ALTAMONTE,
was situated on another railroad line, the South Florida Railroad, and that
location had a luxury hotel as well. Distinguishing the two locations became
crucial, and so on the 12th of January, 1888, one year after Widow Saunders acquired Hoosier Springs, Frank W. Baker, the merchant of Lot 22 in Altamont, became Postmaster of a newly formed Palm Springs Post Office.
“Palm Springs 1893: The spring from which the place takes its
name is about one quarter of a mile north of the store. Hoosier Springs is a
short distance west of the store.” Illustrated Orange County, 1893
Having viewed Palm
Springs in 1895 from onboard
Orange Belt Railway, Amos Root returned a day later to personally “investigate” the area: “In a little shady nook were great palm trees
that threw their protecting branches all over and around, and a beautiful
crystal spring boils up, sending out a volume sufficient to make a good sized
creek. The waters are just warm enough for nice bathing, and there are seats
arranged on the mossy banks, making it a most inviting place for picnickers or
pleasure-seekers.”
The author of ‘Gleanings in Bee Culture’, Amos Root wrote of
touring central Florida months after the freeze of 1894-95. The region’s future at the time of Root’s visit was not
yet known, although perhaps unknowingly, he predicted the area’s fate while at
the same time telling of a little shady nook known as Palm Springs: “In consequence
of the freeze, however, business was, as might be expected, dead, and things looked dull.”
Elizabeth
McClain Saunders-Massey had been mother to seven. She buried two
husbands and five of her children prior to 1900.
The son she brought south because of his poor health, John McClain Saunders, was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando after his death, August 30, 1906. John’s Orlando physician at the
time of his death was Dr. Washington
Kilmer, formerly of Altamont.
Elizabeth and her only surviving son, Thomas Malcolm Saunders, returned north to Canada. Thomas died in
April, 1917, in France, during World
War I. One month before her 83rd
birthday, eight years after Seminole County carved away a portion of Orange
County, Elizabeth McClain Saunders-Massey, on June 3, 1921, passed away at Ontario, Canada. The year of her death, only one of two 1921 Seminole County maps included Palm Springs. Soon thereafter, most
every sign of Elizabeth’s once-upon-a-time town began to vanish.
Florida’s Great Freeze of 1894-95 destroyed not only the
State’s record-setting citrus crop, projected to be nearly 9 million boxes, it
wiped out as well the ambitious dreams of many of the wealthiest individuals in
the world.
Racing along at a top speed of nearly 6 mph, travel aboard
Orange Belt Railway in the spring of 1895,
and meet the visionaries, men and women alike, those who had given it their all
to establish West Orange County.
CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains includes stops at Sylvan Lake; Paola; Island Lake; Glen Ethel;
Palm Springs; Forest City; Toronto; Lakeville; Clarcona; Crown Point; Winter
Garden and Oakland.
CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO VISIT AMAZON.COM SITE
Along the 35 mile West
Orange County route of Orange Belt Railway you will meet many of the region’s
earliest settlers, including: Edward T. Stotesbury; John Parker Ilsley; Brothers
Alastair & William MacLeod; Whitner; Benjamin M. Robinson; Thomas E. Wilson;
Fox; Mary Lambert; Dr. Washington Kilmer; Ingram Fletcher; Roswell Fulmer;
Walter W. Hunt; Mrs. Elizabeth (McClain) Saunders-Massey; Peter A. Demens;
Allan MacDowell Smyth; the Root family; John G. Hower; George Reed; Alice C.
Hill; Samuel Hyde; Sidney Witty; David E. Washburn; Robert A. Mills; Mahlon
Gore; the Roper family; the Speer family and many others.
CitrusLAND books, the true history of the people and events
that shaped central Florida, by Richard Lee Cronin. Copyright 2015.
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