Central Florida History Challenge - Part 4

 What was Central Florida’s “BIG Secret” of 1887-88?

James F. Hobart, a correspondent for Palatka Daily News, while traveling from Eustis south to Tavares aboard the afternoon St. Johns & Lake Eustis train of June 22, 1887, described having to present a “stificate” to the conductor after departing the Mount Homer depot. Only then said Hobart, could he enter the “magical city he had read so much about”. We will assume “stificate” was the Great Lake Region jargon for a “certificate”.

The ‘Big Secret’ was certainly not limited to Tavares or the northwest corner of Orange County. Pine Castle, 5 miles south of Orlando, where the first President of Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad first homesteaded, offered little about the passing of his father-in-law, Charles G. Nute.

The silence was indeed deafening throughout Florida’s Citrus Belt – leaving folks to assume the worst when, at 27 years old, the founder of Ellsworth Junction died in December of 1887.

So, what was Central Florida’s “BIG Secret”? What did the locals prefer not to discuss – despite the fact much of the world already knew? 

THE ANSWER:

More than two hundred Florida Citrus Belt towns were founded during the early 1880s, many being place-names locals recognize today, but cannot precisely pinpoint on any map.

Palm Springs, Crown Point, Ellsworth Junction, MacKinnon, and Paolo were but a few of the up and coming central Florida 1880s towns that suddenly vanished prior to the dawn of the 20^th century. A Great Freeze during the winter of 1894-95 had been the second coffin spike for many of these present day ghost towns, but that freeze had followed on the heels of an earlier, far more serious human tragedy. The freeze killed the citrus, but the yellow fever epidemic of 1887-88 threatened to kill Florida’s visitors and homesteaders.

Orange Belt Railway, orange highlight above, crossed Florida Midland Railway, yellow highlight above, in the town of Palm Springs, formerly Hoosier Springs, (purple square), and Altamont (no E), right of purple square. [Exhibit 12 of CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains]. Today this is the intersection of SR 434 and Markham Woods road.

Central Florida had been marketed as free of the fever, malaria, and other such diseases talked of existing in Florida’s swamplands. Land agents had used such enticing marketing terms as Eden, America’s Paradise, the Gardens of the Hesperides, to attract northerners – to convince them to escape the bitter cold and settle instead in a land of health, wealth, and happiness.

Homesteaders and speculators cordoned off a piece of their land in the early 1880s to cash in on an expected onslaught of newcomers - northerners desiring to own a piece of Paradise.

More than dozen railroads began crisscrossing central Florida almost overnight, and all along the newly laid track towns sprang up. A Cleveland Department Store owner founded Forest City on the Orange Belt Railway line (Citrusland: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains), naming his new Florida city after his hometown’s nickname. An English family set aside a square mile for a town in South Orange County, naming their metropolis on the South Florida Railroad in honor of the family patriarch, Sir William MacKinnon, a shipping titan and British Baronet (Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County).

Sir William MacKinnon (Exhibit 43 of Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County)  

And two Orlando Attorneys partnered in founding Tavares, with plans for establishing it as a South Florida railroad hub. (Tavares: Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County).

Plat of 1882 Tavares recorded at Orlando, Orange County in 1886

A sand-rutted wilderness January 1, 1880, by that year’s end two railroads were operating in Orange County – two railroads that finally made it possible to move about the vast land known today as central Florida. Within only a few years the two railroads became a dozen – and by 1887, six railroads were running 20 trains daily into and out of downtown Tavares. America’s Paradise was flourishing!

Then came a Yellow Fever epidemic. National newspapers in the north began running stories of yellow fever in the Florida Keys, Tampa, and Jacksonville. And as Tampa trains passed through Orange County on their way to Jacksonville, potential land buyers in the north chose not to travel to the land of wealth, health, and sunshine.

As trains from the north stopped bringing snowbirds, town lots went unsold. Railroad revenues faltered, and soon thereafter railroads themselves began to fail.     

Not until 1929 did a letter surface explaining that Charles Goodspeed Nute, father-in-law of Attorney William R. Anno, first President of Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad, “died at Orlando on May 25, 1886 of Yellow Fever”.

Newspaper correspondent James F. Hobart of the Palatka Daily News was permitted to enter the city of Tavares on June 22, 1887 only after showing his Palatka Health Department “certificate” to the railroad conductor. Four days earlier, at Runnymede, near Kissimmee, Helen (Heig) Warner sat down to write a letter to her mother back home in England. She started her June 18, 1887 letter by writing: “There is a scare of yellow fever just now, we are in quarantine.”      

Later that year, in December, the 27 year-old founder of Ellsworth died. A railroad town five miles south of Tavares, “Junction” had only recently been added after a second railroad laid track into the city. The young town founder died of undisclosed causes, although the reason would not have mattered – not during panic-stricken central Florida of 1887.

Central Florida dreams began to crumble, and citizens likely wondered what could possibly be worse. But as for Tavares, the answer was a devastating fire – in less than four months.

19^th century Central Floridians were amazing people. And they now live again, as do the remarkable times during which much of central Florida was founded, on the pages of books by Richard Lee Cronin.

More than a story about the origins of Tavares, this latest central Florida book tells the transformation from a popular 'Great Lake Region' to Lake County, Florida of may, 1887. Click on my book cover to read the book's critique or to buy it at Amazon.

Tavares

Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County

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Or visit my CroninBooks.com website for details on each of my central Florida books