florida travel and tourist guidenorth floridaflorida panhandlecentral florida visitor information - tampa, st petersburg, sarasotacontact information

About FloridaHotels and ResortsAttractionsArt and EntertainmentDiningShoppingReal EstateVisitor InformationCalendar of EventsReturn to Home Page

Featured Websites

Southwest Florida

Miami Florida

Key West and the Florida Keys

South Beach

florida everglades

florida visitor and tourist information
Florida Travel and Tourist Information

Florida - Springs, Lakes And Forests

( Originally Published Mid 1930's )

Ocala, county seat of Marion County, is the center of a more diversified agricultural district than any we have yet explored. It is one of the oldest and most prolific citrus regions of inland Florida; indeed, Marion County is regarded as the cradle of the commercial citrus industry. Prior to the big freeze of 1895 almost the entire county was a big orange grove. Here those most useful commercial shipping varieties the "Parson Brown" and "Pineapple" oranges were developed.

While it is still a highly important citrus section, the landowners of Marion County heeded the warning of the freeze of '95 and began forty years ago to diversify their agricul tural activities. For years this has been a progressive live stock center. The highest priced hog ever sold was bred in Marion County, a Poland-China boar which brought $15,000. When the boll weevil reached Florida in 1917 and put an end to cotton production, Marion County turned to winter vegetable growing and Ocala ships hundreds of cars of tomatoes, string beans, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce and other vegetables, as well as watermelons and cantaloupes. So successful have been the poultry farms of this region that Marion County has been likened to California's Petaluma district, the world's most famous White Leghorn center. Dairy farming is also a field in which this section ranks among the leaders.

In beef cattle this district was among the first in Florida to go in extensively for importing pure-bred sires and breeding up the native stock. Because of the assured supply of beef cattle, Swift & Company selected Ocala as the location in which to establish their first Florida abattoir and packing house, which was opened in the Summer of 1937. The new Ocala stockyards and packing house occupy city and countyowned buildings and property, constituting a part of the Central Florida State Farmers' Market and Cold-storage Plant which was opened in May, 1937. This is one of several such wholesale markets established in various Florida agricultural quarters under the direction of the State Department of Agriculture and financed by P. W. A. loans. The purpose is to make it possible for the grower of small quantities of any commodity to pool his products with those of his neighbors and receive the same price that shippers of carload lots obtain. In the growing season a procession of trucks from the northern markets line up at the loading platforms to take on supplies in competition with the railroads. Sea Island cotton, peanuts, eggs and bright-leaf tobacco have lately been added to Marion County's list of agricultural products for which there is a ready market.

Ocala makes its bid for the tourist trade with excellent hotels, numerous apartments and cottages for seasonal rent and a municipal trailer camp, while providing all of the cus tomary Florida recreational facilities for winter visitors. Its greatest attraction, however, is the nearby world-famous natural wonder, Silver Springs.

Lying five and one-half miles East of Ocala, Silver Springs is the outlet of a subterranean river which rises to the surface through a cavern at the bottom of the circular basin from which the waters flow through the nine-mile Silver River to the Oklawaha and so on down through the St. Johns to the sea. For many years small steamboats brought tourists all the way by water from Jacksonville to the Spring itself; it is still possible to navigate the entire distance by canoe, outboard motor boat or small yacht over winding waterways which flow through wild jungle scenery.

Silver Springs is listed by the state geologist as the largest spring in the world. Its daily outflow averages 522,000,000 gallons, and at the height of an exceptionally rainy season has exceeded 800,000,000, enough to supply the daily needs of the entire city of New York. The water is of a high degree of purity, crystal-clear; so clear, indeed, that photographs and motion pictures can be taken under water almost equally as well as in the open air.

Practically all under-water motion pictures exhibited today have been filmed at Silver Springs, where a submarine studio has been set up. A floating tank or caisson extends to a depth of 15 feet under water, one side of it composed of plate glass through which the camera man, himself quite dry, photographs under water scenes of bathers, divers, dancers on the floor of the sea, inquisitive fishes and other stunts. There is a regular troupe of experienced under-water actors at Silver Springs, headed by Newton Perry, a 200-pound six-footer who can do almost anything under water that a fish can. Perry has a record of staying under water in action for two minutes and 20 seconds, which is long enough to make 140 feet of movie film. Some of the girl swimmers in his troupe can act under water for nearly a minute and a half.

The waters of Silver Springs teem with a great variety of fish, swarms of which are visible at depths of 40 feet or more through the glass bottoms of the boats provided for visitors. The beautiful rock formations and the under-water vegetation add to the interest which everyone displays in this remarkable scenic wonder. The grounds around Silver Springs have been handsomely parked and provided with picnic grounds. Bathing facilities with diving tower and spring boards and pontoons for sunbathing are among the other attractions. A Seminole Indian village has been set up back in the jungle below the Spring. Here also is the Florida Reptile Institute, where every variety of snake and reptile native to Florida is on exhibition alive.

From Silver Springs a wide, paved highway leads eastward through, the heart of the Ocala National Forest. The national forests in Florida are far less widely-known to tourists and, for that matter, to Floridians themselves, than are many more widely-publicized attractions. They offer to vacationists and to sportsmen opportunities for outdoor life and recreation, free from artificially induced excitement and away from crowds, which appeal strongly to a growing class of Florida visitors.

The Ocala National Forest, designated as such by an Act of Congress in 1908, is the oldest. It contains 450,000 acres, extending from the St. Johns River and Lake George on the East to the Oklawaha River on the West, in Marion, Putnam and Lake counties, between the cities of Deland and Ocala. It contains the largest area in the world of sand pine, commonly known as "scrub" pine. The U. S. Forest Service, which is in complete control of all national forests, is concerned with the preservation and propagation of this scrub pine as a source of pulpwood for paper manufacturing, experiments having proved it to be the best adapted of all the southern pines for that purpose.

The sand pine is peculiar in that it depends largely on fire as an agent in its reproduction. The sand pine seeds live for years in unopened cones. The slightest burn kills the sand pine tree, but a forest fire which deadens the underbrush open the cones and releases the accumulated seed, from which a new crop of these short-lived trees develops. In the rainy seasons this scrub pine forest is practically fireproof, but in long dry spells it is highly inflammable. On March 12, 1935, a fire driven by a wind of gale proportions swept through the Ocala forest, burning 30,000 acres in five hours, or an average of one hundred acres a minute. This fire swept across the Daytona Highway, bringing motor traffic to a standstill and injuring several firefighters who were trapped in the path of the flames.

While the major purpose of a National Forest is to provide for sustained timber production, and incidentally control of soil erosion and the regulation of stream flow, the Government policy includes also the conservation and propagation of wild life and the opening of the forest area, under proper restrictions and regulations, for the recreational use of everybody. The Ocala National Forest lends itself to these purposes in various ways. The scrub pine has always been an especially favored habitat for wild life. In the Ocala Forest larger numbers of two particular varieties of birds are found than exist in such large numbers anywhere else. These are the Florida Jay and the White-eyed Towhee. The scrub is also an outpost of such dwindling species as the Florida black bear, the Florida wolf and the panther, known in the West as the mountain lion.

From the hunter's point of view, however, its principal attraction is the white-tailed deer, which survived in the dense growth long after they were exterminated in the surrounding country. In 1930, by Presidential proclamation, a section of the southern part of the Ocala Forest, now including 78,000 acres, was set apart as the Ocala National Game Refuge. Within that area the deer are protected at all times, so that they propagate unmolested; no fire-arms nor unleashed dogs may be taken into the Refuge, but every year hunters come from all over the country for the deer shooting in the Forest outside of the Game Refuge, and take an annual bag of about 700 deer. Fourteen camp grounds, established primarily for the hunters, have been constructed in the Forest, all of them open to the public the year around.

Fishing and boating on rivers, lakes and prairie ponds are among the other recreational facilities afforded by the Ocala Forest. The visitor who enjoys boating needs to bring no equipment beyond his own outboard motor, to be attached to a rowboat which he can rent at any one of several points on the borders of the forest, and he can spend a week or more traversing the water-courses which form the eastern, northern and western boundaries of the reservation, camping at night at any of the landings along the Oklawaha and St. Johns Rivers. And if he has his fishing tackle with him he can be sure of a good catch of black bass and jackfish.

The best fishing in the Ocala National Forest, however, is in the lakes, of which there are nine of large size and twenty or thirty smaller ones, not counting the prairie ponds, which have no surface inlets or outlets and lie in the middle of wide, treeless depressions.

Swimming in the four large fresh-water spring-lakes and the slightly saline salt springs within the Forest is increasingly popular as interest in this form of outdoor sport grows. The waters of these springs are precisely like those of the famous Silver Spring a few miles west of the Forest, the water pure and crystal clear with an average temperature of 76 degree the year around. One of them, Juniper Springs, in the scrub, has been developed extensively as a swimming and recreational center, and in 1937 similar development was begun at Alexander Spring, the largest in the forest.

The development of Juniper Springs recreation area covers 80 acres. The actual work was done by the C. C. C. under the direction of the Forest Supervisor and the District Rangers.

Picnic grounds, tourist cabins, a trailer camp and an extensive system of clay-gravel paths throughout the area have been provided by the Federal Government in addition to the equipment of juniper Spring itself with bath houses, diving platforms and other necessary accessories.

All of this Ocala National Forest is easily accessible by motor from any part of Florida. Three State Highways, Florida 19, Florida 45 and Florida 55, cross the Forest, within which more than 100 miles of motor roads in every direction have been built, and three other State highways take the motorist within a mile or two of the Forest boundaries.

Taking the southerly road at the Eastern edge of the Forest we find our way easily into the regions of lakes and hills which, in the flamboyant days of the real estate boom, used to be advertised on a huge bilboard at the south end of the Jacksonville bridge, inviting the motorist to "Visit the Florida Alps!" Lake County is not precisely alpine, but its hills offer a refreshing contrast to the generally flat and level landscape of the Florida peninsula, while its fourteen hundred fresh-water lakes, most of them big enough to have names, go far to justify its claim to provide the best black bass fishing in the world. Lake County people simply don't mention any bass that weighs less than ten pounds. The walls of the dining room of the principal hotel at Eustis are lined with mounted specimens of bass weighing from 13 pounds upward, with the name of the captor and the date.

This is preeminently a county of homes and orange groves. A home in Lake County is hardly a home unless it is surrounded by its own citrus grove, from which the home-owner usually derives a large part of the income on which he lives. Like all Florida communities, the cities of Lake County spread out over wide enough areas to take in orange groves, vegetable and watermelon farms, vineyards, golf courses and whole lakes, including their yacht clubs. The communities are so thickly sprinkled over the county that the tourist travelling over the main highways can hardly tell where one city ends and the next begins except by reading the names on the Post Offices, which are usually on the main roads.

Tavares, the County seat, lies between Lake Eustis and Lake Dora, with the cities of Eustis and Mt. Dora hugging the shores of their namesake lakes. Leesburg, the largest city in the county, lies between Lake Griffin and Lake Harris. From Altoona and Umatilla in the North to Clermont and Groveland in the South there is hardly a spot in Lake County which is not practically surrounded by water. And in the upper part the town of Astor is a port on the St. Johns River.

This is great citrus country because of its hills and lakes, providing as they do protection against frost by the air-drainage down the slopes and the tempering effect of the warm lake waters. These are big lakes. Lake Harris, largest of them all, is forty miles from end to end. On the eastern edge of the county and extending into Orange County is Florida's second largest lake, Apopka, half as large as Okeechobee. It is not surprising that among the most popular tourist resorts in Florida are the fourteen fishing camps of Lake County.

The cities of Lake County have a uniform air of cleanliness and sprightliness. They compete with each other for the tourist trade, but are united in their insistence that Lake County, any part of it, is the best place in Florida to live. It probably contains among its 28,000 permanent residents a higher proportion of northerners who have become Floridians than any other similar area in the state. Because there are no large cities, but a large number of small communities, the promotional efforts of Lake County for tourists and permanent home seekers are chiefly centered in the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, the oldest County organization of its kind in Florida and perhaps in the United States.

With the second largest citrus acreage of any Florida county, currently third in volume of production until the young groves set out in the 1930's come into full bearing, Lake County tackled the citrus problem as a county unit from a different angle than the approach elsewhere. Discarding the notion that better prices for oranges and grapefruit can be obtained by talking about them, Lake County growers in the late 1920's got together to see whether it might not have as good an effect upon their profits if they cut their cost of production. In ten years, through the efforts of the Lake County Horticultural Association and the cooperation of the County Agricultural agent, citrus production costs in the county have been reduced fifty percent. This has been brought about in part by studying and adopting improved methods of cultivation, fertilization, picking, etc., and in part by the cooperative buying of fertilizers and insecticides as well as equipment and supplies used by the growers. The result is that the shippers of Lake County's $2,000,000 annual citrus crop average a higher proportion of cash that they can put in their bank accounts than is the case throughout most of the state.

Scientific citrus culture has possibly reached its highest stage so far in the largest orange and grapefruit development in the world, the Howey Groves at Howey-in-the-Hills. Here on 60,000 acres of beautiful rolling country grow half a million orange and grapefruit trees with annual plantings calculated to bring the number of trees up to an eventual 3,000,000. These Howey groves are individually owned tracts, mostly of from five to ten acres, cooperatively managed in every detail from planting to sales and shipment of fruit. Their owners live in all parts of the world. Many of them have never even seen their groves, which are income investments; many of them live in nearby Lake County homes.

Net returns of mature orange groves run from $175 to $200 per acre; young groves net incomes of from $50 to $100 per acre, while there is a record of one 47-acre grove which earned a net profit in one season of $40,000.

Within the limits of Lake County are grown more watermelons than in any other Florida county, more grapes than in all the rest of the state put together. These and the truck and staple crops, poultry, eggs, cattle and hogs add another million dollars a year to the county's $2,000,000 citrus income. The Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Florida maintains a special research station at Leesburg for the study and improvement of watermelons. One result is a disease-resisting melon known as the "Leesburg."

Clermont, in Lake County, claims the highest altitude on the Florida peninsula, the lowest death rate of any city in the United States. An extremely interesting Florida mineral prod uct found near Clermont is kieselguhr, or diatomaceous earth. This, like the coquina rock, is composed of the microscopic remains, skeletons and shells, of infinitesimal sea creatures known as diatoms or infusoria. These tiny remains are so small that they are not visible to the naked eye; their presence can only be detected by the microscope. These microscopic skeletons, however, have retained such hardness that they form the basis of fine abrasives and polishing pastes and powders.

The most intriguing use of this material, however, is in the manufacture of moisture-proof salt-shakers. The use of diatomite in the cap of the salt-shaker prevents salt from be coming soggy, the moisture of the air being absorbed by the cap. Clermont salt-shakers are popular in seashore towns. Near Leesburg are deposits of kaolin, a white clay used in industry.

A unique institution at Clermont is the Postal Colony, founded by retired postal clerks. These pensioners of the Federal service own and operate about 2,000 acres of citrus groves and many of them have built cottages in the colony for their permanent homes.

Another unique and highly interesting Lake County institution is at Montverde, the Montverde School, where boys and girls not only obtain a well-rounded education but learn by do ing a great variety of work which most youngsters have no opportunity to practice until they have finished with schooling. The school has a farm of 150 acres besides a large citrus grove, and every student is required to earn a part of his or her school'. costs by work on farm or grove, in the wood-working and automobile repair shops or in the apiary. The preparation and serving of all the meals for the students is a part of the girls' training in domestic science. Each boy works at these vocational tasks two hours and a half a day and each girl spends an hour and a half a day in the culinary department. A large part of the construction and maintenance work on the seventeen buildings which stand on the beautifully landscaped 50-acre campus, is done by the boys. Practically the entire construction of the newest building, D. A. R. Hall sponsored by the Florida chapters of the D. A. R. was done by the boy students of the school.

Individual communities in Lake County have their particular prides, as all Florida communities have. Umatilla's is the crippled Children's Home, established by the Elks of Florida through the cooperation and generosity of Mr. and Mrs. H. R. P. Miller, for the care and education of boys and girls afflicted with infantile paralysis and other crippling ailments. Leesburg's pride in the illuminated fountain in its city park is perhaps somewhat overshadowed by its pride in the Venetian gardens, a water front park on Lake Harris. Tavares is pride-ful of its unique flagpole and base erected in front of the county courthouse for the 1937 semi-centennial of the county. The pedestal from which the flagpole rises is built of stones from every state and country, contributed by natives of those places who now live in Lake County. Eustis is the scene of the great southern shooting meet every January, the winter "Vandalia" tinder the auspices of the Eustis Gun Club, to which sportsmen come from all over the country. Eustis is also the site of the annual Lake County Fair, held in January.

Leesburg attracts numbers of fishing enthusiasts, with its National Fresh Water Fishing Tournament, held annually from January 10th to March 10th and open only to non-resi dent sportsmen. The small-mouthed black bass, infrequent in Florida waters, is occasionally found in the lakes of this region. The large-mounted black bass, Florida's principal freshwater game fish, is displacing its small-mouthed cousin here as elsewhere in the state.

Tourists as well as permanent residents come to Lake County from all over the United States and add another estimated million dollars annually to its $3,000,000 agricultural income. It is claimed on behalf of Lake County that it attracts more permanent residents, in proportion to its tourist population, than does any other section of Florida. This is accounted for by the almost unlimited water-frontage of the county's 1,400 lakes, making more water front homes possible.

It is hard to imagine a Lake County home without its own orange and grapefruit grove, its vegetable garden and its profuse ornamental planting.

How thriving, productive agricultural communities grow in Florida on the cut-over lands after the lumbermen have finished is demonstrated at Groveland. And south of Groveland is a development on which Lake County's high hopes are pinned. They are drilling for oil.