Historic Photos of Florida Ghost Towns

By Steve Rajtar

Unlike the movie ghost towns of the Old West, the ghost towns in Florida don’t have tumbleweeds rolling on deserted dirt roads, abandoned wooden saloons, and lone drifters on horseback. Although the landscape may have dramatically changed, many of these once-thriving communities declined due to widespread economic changes, disastrous weather, company closings, or vital industries disappearing or moving elsewhere. In fact, some of these so-called ghost towns have been absorbed by larger cities still inhabited by Floridians today. In Historic Photos of Florida Ghost Towns, author Steve Rajtar takes readers decades back in Florida’s history to discover these ghost towns through the lens of two hundred black-and-white photographsin some cases, the only remains of these forgotten towns. Explore the landscapes, houses, schools, businesses, organizations, places of worship, and people who once called these now-nonexistent towns home. Imagine what life was like in hundreds of these tight-knit communities as you explore a century and a half of this sunny, populous state that many still call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Jan 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781618583949

Book preview

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

FLORIDA

GHOST TOWNS

TEXT AND CAPTIONS BY STEVE RAJTAR

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In 1916, two Harvard University chemical engineers testing the beaches along Florida’s east coast found useful minerals at this location. This photo from around 1927 shows the Buckman and Prichard Incorporated ilmenite mill located in Mineral City, founded in St. Johns County in 1916. After extraction of the ilmenite (titanium ore), the tailings would then be worked for the extraction of rutile, zircon, monazite, and silicate. During World War II, the federal government took over the area and used the minerals in the production of munitions. The area is now an upscale tourist resort with a focus on golf, known as Ponte Vedra Beach. The mining company, National Lead Company, created the area’s first golf courses for recreation of its employees.

HISTORIC PHOTOS OF

FLORIDA

GHOST TOWNS

Turner Publishing Company

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Historic Photos of Florida Ghost Towns

Copyright © 2010 Turner Publishing Company

All rights reserved.

This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009933002

ISBN: 978-1-59652-552-8

Printed in China

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

COMPANY CLOSINGS

PLANTATION DECLINES

BLAME IT ON THE RAILROAD

GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT

DISASTROUS WEATHER

FIRES

JUST FADED AWAY

ABSORBED BY ANOTHER CITY

NOTES ON THE PHOTOGRAPHS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Enterprise Junction was located in Volusia County at the junction of Indian River Division railroad tracks owned by Luther Caldwell and Elijah Watson. Today it is found approximately at the intersection of Benson Junction Road and Shell Road, southwest of DeBary. In 1925, the Ox Brush Fibre Company moved there from Sanford, where it had operated since 1884. For a time, it was the country’s largest manufacturer of brushes, making them from palmetto fibers. In addition to the manufacturing plant, the company had 17 houses for its employees, a post office named Benson Junction, and stores. The business closed down during the 1970s.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume, Historic Photos of Florida Ghost Towns, is the result of the cooperation and efforts of many individuals and organizations. It is with great thanks that we acknowledge the valuable contribution of the Florida State Archives, and the many photographers and collectors who have shared their images of the state by donating them to the Florida Photographic Collection.

We would also like to thank those who seek out the communities that no longer exist, providing valuable resources for historians, genealogists, and those who just want to see how our predecessors lived. In particular, we would like to recognize the contributions of Jim Pike, Mike Woodfin, and all of the other contributors to GhostTowns.com.

With the exception of touching up imperfections that have accrued with the passage of time and cropping where necessary, no changes have been made to the photographs. The focus and clarity of many photographs is limited to the technology and the ability of the photographer at the time they were taken.

PREFACE

When most people think of a ghost town, they conjure up an image of a dusty group of dilapidated wooden buildings in the Old West. Tumbleweeds roll down the street. Hinged doors of a saloon flap noisily in the wind. Broken windows, empty wooden sidewalks, and perhaps a drifter on horseback passing through complete what Hollywood has led us to believe is a ghost town.

Although such an abandoned area would certainly fit anyone’s definition of a ghost town, many other scenarios also qualify. Various criteria for identifying these towns have been developed over the years, and to better understand the scope of this work, it is necessary to know the criteria used in selecting the Florida ghost towns from the large number of settlements that existed, but are no more.

The town must have had a reason to exist as a community. Often, it was established to support a single company or a single industry, or perhaps a group of farms located near one another. It may have sprung up as a shipping point along a waterway or railroad line, or may have started as a camp for workers laying track or building a bridge. In some cases, towns originated as military forts or as supporting residences, stores, and businesses just outside their gates.

After establishment, the town must have had a period of growth. It may have been a rapid boom period or a gradual increase in population, but in any event, there must have been growth. If the town could not attract people to work in the local industry, operate stores, pastor churches, or provide the services needed in any viable community, it wasn’t really a town to begin with.

The next important phase needed for a town to evolve into a ghost town, of course, is a decrease in population. It must be a substantial decrease in that there must be too few left to maintain a real sense of community. It may be the result of an obvious event such as a hurricane or massacre or epidemic. It may be a consequence of something identifiable but less immediate, such as the gradual departure of residents following a factory or mine closing, the rerouting of a railroad, or competition with another nearby town that was better at attracting residents. It may also be less obvious, with people leaving for other destinations for a variety of reasons, or no specific reason at all.

Finally, the formerly thriving town should not be there anymore, whether the site now has ruins of buildings, nothing at all recognizable as a human residence, or is a modern city bearing no resemblance to the former town. Basically, if there used to be a town there, and it’s no longer there, it’s a ghost town. If its history is documented in words and pictures, it may be one included in this volume.

Unlike the movie ghost towns of the Old West, those in Florida rarely have wooden sidewalks, swinging saloon doors, or anything else constructed of wood. It doesn’t take long in Florida for unmaintained wooden structures to disappear: they are ravaged by termites, carried away by winds and floods, and reduced to ashes by frequent fires. Rather than being preserved by a dry climate as in cowboy movies, abandoned wooden towns in Florida quickly revert to palmettos and pines. Therefore, unless the abandonment of a town is fairly recent, what survives at Florida ghost town sites is generally made of other material, such as stone foundations, brick walls, or marble gravestones. Wood will be no more than a memory, with the possible exception of that treated with creosote or other chemical preservatives.

There are many reasons a town loses its population and its raison d’être. Often, an area settled to support a single company or a single industry will pass into memory not long after that company or activity ceases. In several instances, when a company closed, it not only terminated the town but also gave its residents deadlines by which they would be required to purchase and move their homes, or else demolition crews would eliminate them. Similarly, the decline of plantations as viable crop producers took away the necessity for nearby supporting settlements.

Railroads and governments have played major roles in creating ghost towns. Where a train track is placed, or where it is moved to, bears strongly on where a successful town can lie. When a government dissolves a town’s charter, or acquires the land on which it sits for a public purpose, the town will often quickly disappear.

Other ways of rapidly converting a thriving settlement into a ghost town include fires, floods, hurricanes, and epidemics. More often, however, a town merely fades away over a period of time without a single drastic event. Perhaps the town loses its will to exist because its crops lose their demand, other regions of the state become more popular, or for no easily definable reason.

The final category covered herein is that the old town