Shown in this photo from around 1887 are the Silver Springs Hotel and the tracks and cars of the Florida Railway and Navigation Company. The post office closed in 1867, reopened in 1872, and closed for good in 1916. Silver Springs opened its first post office in 1852 when it was a stage stop along the route from Palatka to Tampa. The community grew up around the spring in central Marion County, later the site of amusement parks. It provides crystal-clear water at the head of the Silver River, east of the intersection of SR 40 and NE 55th Avenue east of Ocala. The town of Silver Springs was named after the state’s largest spring, first reported by Colonel Gad Humphreys in 1825. Shown here in 1913 is the Florida Lime Company Plant Number 3 in Zuber. Zuber had its own post office for only 10 years, from 1907 until 1917, when mail service shifted to Kendrick. The town of Zuber was located along CR 25A between Ocala and Reddick, and was named for a local family. Years later, it ceased to be a separate community, and its remaining buildings were absorbed into an Ocala neighborhood. In 1938, the National Youth Administration used it as a girls’ resident camp, and in 1943 it passed back to the Corps of Engineers. After that project was canceled, Camp Roosevelt was operated by the University of Florida and the Works Progress Administration for adult education classes. A post office opened that year to serve crews from the Army Corps of Engineers who arrived to construct the Cross Florida Barge Canal. In 1935, a new settlement was established along US 301/441, named Camp Roosevelt after the then-president. The post office was open from 1882 until 1947, when it moved south on US 441 to McIntosh, the town that shared a cemetery with Boardman. After the 1894-95 freeze, it had a population of only 15. Boardman, this town was served by the railroad shown in this 1880s photo. Nearby was this oil derrick photographed in 1928, belonging to the Flesher Petroleum Company.įounded in 1863 and believed to have been named for an early settler, L. This town was located along US 27 at the intersection with CR 464B in western Marion County and was connected to Ocala by a pony express mail route in the 1880s. In the 1970s, federal termination of the Cross Florida Barge Canal project and the proposed recreational facility in Eureka killed the town’s chances of making a comeback. Near Eureka, a large hydroelectric dam and power plant was planned during the 1920s, but the advent of the Great Depression killed the project before construction began. The section passing by Eureka was the narrowest part of the Oklawaha River, Cypress Gate, and it determined the maximum width of the steamboats constructed especially for that river. Pictured here in 1892 is a steamboat taking on wood as fuel at the Eureka landing. Near the Oklawaha River, along CR 316 east of Fort McCoy, was the town of Eureka, from the Greek term meaning “I have found it.” Its post office operated from 1873 until 1955, then moved to Citra. This photo from around 1910 shows the employees of the Weaver Loughridge Lumber Company sawmill located in Boyd. It was located along the Norfolk Southern Railroad track where CR 140 (Boyd Road) crosses it just west of US 221. Boyd and had its own post office from only 1891 until 1895. Although such an abandoned area would certainly fit anyone’s definition, many other scenarios also qualify (see sidebar).īut whatever the criteria for identifying these towns, Florida has hundreds or thousands of examples, fascinating remnants of our not-too-distant past for those who strive to imagine what used to be. 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. Hinged doors of a saloon flap noisily in the wind. 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.
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