History

The first people to settle in what is now Florida, the Paleoindians, probably arrived about 10,000 B.C., during the last Ice Age. As the climate warmed and became wetter, the Paleoindian culture changed as they adapted. From 7,500 B.C. to 500 B.C. three different climate changes and people adapting to the changes delineated three eras: early Archaic, middle Archaic, and late Archaic. By the late Archaic era, the climate and environment was essentially the same as today.

The late Archaic people were great consumers of shell fish, both salt and fresh water, and left behind numerous shell middens. The late Archaic people were probably the first to grow squash and gourds, and the first to fire pottery. Because different cultures made their own distinct pottery, from this point on archaeologists are more easily able to trace the development of different regional cultures up until the arrival of Europeans. Many different cultures have been defined since the late Archaic. The Timucua, the Native Americans who inhabited the Lake Apopka area at the time the Europeans arrived, developed from the St. Johns culture.

Around 800 A.D. Florida Native Americans began cultivating corn. Populations increased, villages grew in number and size, and cultures became more complex. By the 16th century, the Timucua speaking peoples dominated roughly the northern third of the state. Lake Apopka was near the southern limits of their region. The Timucua grew corn, squash and gourds, but depended a great deal on hunting and gathering. A staple was the starchy wild coontie root, which also became important in the diet of the first European American settlers. The Timucua were sedentary and lived in stockaded villages. Their pottery was made by the women and was some of the finest made east of the Mississippi.

The colonization of Florida by the Spanish proved disastrous to the Native Americans. Waves of epidemics of infectious diseases introduced from Europe crashed upon the Native Americans. Between 1565, the year that the Spanish founded St. Augustine, and 1595, the Timucua speaking population had plummeted from about 150,000 to about 50,000. Savage raids by Creek and Yamasee Indians, often supported by Carolina colonists, further reduced the population. By 1753 only 136 Timucua remained. When the British took Florida from Spain in 1763, the few that were left were expelled from the St. Augustine area. A few Timucua moved south and tried to settle on the Tomoka River, and it is possible that their descendants eventually joined the Seminoles.

The Seminoles were originally part of the Creek Confederacy. Between 1716 and 1767 Creeks in considerable numbers moved into the Florida peninsula. Pressure from colonists in Georgia and Alabama, and war among the Creek themselves, encouraged the Creek to fill the vacuum left by the Timucua. A new culture, the Seminole, was created as the Creek adapted to conditions in Florida. At their peak, the Seminole people in Florida numbered about 5,000.

The First Seminole War took place in 1817 and 1818, when General Andrew Jackson led a U.S. military expedition into Spanish Florida. Violence between Seminoles and Americans had occurred for years before and continued for years after the war. Seminole troubles were used as a pretext as much as a reason for the incursion of the U.S. Army. General Andrew Jackson’s true aim was probably to show the U.S. government just how weak Spanish control of Florida really was. The success of the expedition also made the Spanish realize the tenuous hold they had on the peninsula, and in 1821 Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. for $5 million in Spanish debt and the surrender of the U.S. to any claims on Texas.

The Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1823 restricted Seminoles to the interior of the state from Micanopy to the Peace River. This placed the Lake Apopka area squarely in the center of Seminole territory, discouraging white settlement.

In 1832 the Treaty of Payne’s landing was signed between the U.S. government and a small group of Seminoles, without the consent of most of the Seminole leaders. The treaty called for the Seminoles to give up their lands and move west within three years. The Seminoles balked at the treaty, and when the U.S. Army tried to enforce it, the Second Seminole War erupted. The war was one of the most costly, in both blood and treasure, of all the Indian wars.

The Second Seminole War dragged on from 1835 until 1842. The U.S. Army suffered 1,466 deaths. The number of Seminoles killed is unknown, but by the end of 1843, 3,824 had been captured and sent west, bribed, coerced, or tricked to do so. Only 300 to 400 remained in Florida.

The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 encouraged settlement of the former Seminole lands located between Gainesville and the Peace River. Any head of family or single male over 18 was entitled to 160 acres if he agreed to cultivate at least 5 acres, build a house, and live on the property for five years.

There was a Third Seminole war from 1855 to 1858. The Seminoles had only about 100 warriors, and the war consisted of a series of random raids and attacks. After the destruction of the main Seminole village by U.S. troops in 1857, Chief Billy Bowlegs took the government’s offer of $44,600 dollars for him and his followers to be shipped west. Less than 200 Seminoles remained in Florida.

Regional transportation depended nearly entirely upon Lake Apopka. Sandy trails through the pines and palmettos connected boat landings to those that settled away from the waterway. Lake Apopka, while at the time the state’s second largest lake, had no navigable outlet, and all trade goods had to be transported in and out of the area by horse, mule and oxcart. The early settlers ate most of the crops they grew, and depended upon the wild game of the piney woods and fish from Lake Apopka.

The end of the Civil War in 1865 brought with it an influx of settlers. The rich muck lands around the shore of Lake Apopka were capable of yielding excellent vegetable harvests, and the higher ground was perfect for citrus, but lack of transportation held back the marketing of the produce.

In an effort to relieve the restriction that lack of economical transport was placing on the economy of the local region, in 1879 the Apopka Canal Company was formed to dredge a canal between Lake Apopka and Lake Beauclair. Located north of Lake Apopka, Lake Beauclair is also connected to the Oklawaha Chain of Lakes. Freight from Lake Apopka could be shipped through the canal, then across the Oklawaha Chain to Welaka. From there freight could be loaded onto boats for shipment to Jacksonville, where it could then be transshipped to anywhere in the world.

The Apopka – Beauclair Canal turned out to be a much larger undertaking than originally envisioned, and work was not completed until 1887. The canal never became a major part of the areas transportation solution as the railroads moved in just one year earlier. In 1886, the Orange Belt Line had completed a railroad connecting Oakland, on the southern end of Lake Apopka, with the Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West Railroad at Lake Monroe near Sanford.

The same year that saw the completion of the Apopka – Beauclair Canal, 1887, also saw the connection of the two communities on the west side of Lake Apopka, Montverde and West Apopka (Ferndale), to the rest of the world by the Tavares and Gulf Railroad. The Tavares & Gulf, which never made it any closer to the Gulf of Mexico than the neighboring town of Clermont, became known locally as the Tug & Grunt, the Try & Go, the Turtle & Gopher, as well as other, more colorful, but less pleasant names. The railroad immediately became an integral part of the local resident’s lives. The T&G had originally intended to bypass the Town of Montverde, but leading citizens persuaded railroad officials to come through the town with promises of free right of way, building materials, and voluntary labor.

The T&G provided freight and passenger service between the Lake County communities of Tavares, Astatula, Montverde, Minneola, and Clermont, as well as the Orange County communities of Oakland, Winter Garden, and Ocoee. The T&G was entirely dependent upon the freight and passengers of the local communities it served. Freight consisted mainly of agricultural supplies, watermelons, truck crops, rough cut lumber, and citrus. At one time the train ran holiday excursions from Winter Garden in Orange County to Apopka Springs and Montverde.

An immediate and permanent consequence of the opening of the Apopka-Beauclair canal was an immediate drop in the elevation of the lake level. Marsh and wetlands ringing the lake were drained. Small scale muck farming began, and the produce industry expanded. Marshland that was not cultivated began to grow into wetland hardwood hammocks.

When the local economy flourished, the railroad prospered, and for several years the small railroad with only 38 miles of track was one of the most profitable in the U.S. But hard times were expressed by the railroad through neglected track and roadbed. During one of its periodic declines at the beginning of the last century, the railroad boasted that it held the U.S. record for jumping the tracks the most times during a single round trip, a total of nine times.

When the first settlers arrived on the west shore of Lake Apopka, the high sand hills were covered in old growth pine, some four feet in diameter and over 100 feet tall. By the end of the 19th century, the logging and lumber industry was in full swing, as well as a large turpentine business. By the late 1920’s, the area was nearly completely logged out. The landscape of the area was changed, but not for the last time.

The communities of the west shore of Lake Apopka were, until very recently, rural and agricultural. The rich muck lands around the lakeshore provided the basis for a thriving truck farming industry. The higher land was ideal for citrus.

In the mid 1920’s, several varieties of grapes were developed that were thought to be tolerant of Central Florida’s climate and soil. Two thousand acres of grapes were planted in Lake County, mostly around Montverde. Several large packing houses were built, and it looked as if a profitable industry had been established.

But disaster struck the grape industry before it was barely ten years old, when several fungal diseases swept through the vineyards. Most of the vineyards were replanted in citrus.

The sand hills were cleared of the brush and palmettos left after the pines were logged, and then often used for one crop of watermelons. The hills were then set in citrus. The invention of frozen concentrate in 1945 accelerated the planting, and by the mid 1950’s nearly all of the land in the Green Mountain Scenic Byway viewshed was planted in citrus. A large and powerful industry had emerged on the sand hills of Lake County, and the landscape had changed again.

In the 1980’s a series of devastating freezes struck the citrus industry of Central Florida. Most of the local citrus growers were able to pull through the first freeze, a few, although deep in debt, managed to struggle through the second, but almost none could continue after the third. The hills, which had been covered with thousands of acres of green citrus, were bare. The landscape had changed for the third time in less than 70 years.