Instructions:
1....Print this file.
2....At its end, click on "rules" to see a copy of the trail rules, print it, and then click where indicated at the end of the 3-page rules and patch order form to get back to the list of Florida trails.
3....If you want a hand-drawn map showing the locations of all of the sites, send a self-adressed stamped envelope to Steve Rajtar, 1614 Bimini Dr., Orlando, FL 32806.
4....Hike the trail and order whatever patches you like (optional).
WARNING - This trail may pass through one or more neighborhoods which, although full of history, may now be unsafe for individuals on foot, or which may make you feel unsafe there. Hikers have been approached by individuals who have asked for handouts or who have inquired (not always in a friendly manner) why the hikers are in their neighborhood. Drugs and other inappropriate items have been found by hikers in some neighborhoods. It is suggested that you drive the hike routes first to see if you will feel comfortable walking them and, if you don't think it's a good place for you walk, you might want to consider (1) traveling with a large group, (2) doing the route on bicycles, or (3) choosing another hike route. The degree of comfort will vary with the individual and with the time and season of the hike, so you need to make the determination using your best judgment. If you hike the trail, you accept all risks involved.
This was the location of a house and the Lake Mary Garage, built by Frank Evans in the mid-1920s and rented to Gus Wyman. The house was later razed. The garage which remains here was later rented to, and then sold to, Harvey and Lois Pugh, who sold Gulf gasoline at the adjacent Lake Mary Filling Station.
Homer and Lena Gleason of Pirates, New York, built a general store, gas pump and home here in 1925, which was torn down in mid-1996. In 1926, Country Club Rd. (formerly known as Third St.) became Lake Mary's first hard-surfaced road.
This rusticated cement block house was built by Axel Evald Sjoblom in the mid-1920s as a store. He changed his mind and instead gave it to his daughter, Amanda Sjoblom Reaves, upon her marriage. It now houses a commercial business.
This type of cement block was popular in Florida during the Boom Period of the 1920s, and was rarely used in buildings constructed after that time.
The construction of this church began on December 26, 1927, on land donated by A.E. Sjoblom. The cornerstone was laid on January 3, 1928. It was first occupied before completion, and was dedicated on March 30, 1930.
Architect J.L. Snoddy volunteered his time to prepare the plans, which were used by the leading workmen, Leon Pickering and Walter Flanders. Frank Evans was a member of the building committee and established credit and assisted in acquiring materials. Church membership in 1996 was approximately 160.
This land is part of a homestead granted to Robert C. West by President Benjamin Harrison on June 17, 1891. In 1918, this two-story home with bay windows was built.
When the disastrous freezes of December 26, 1894, and February 7, 1895, struck the tiny citrus community of Bents near Crystal Lake, the community was in danger of disappearing. What saved it, and gave it a chance to grow into the city now known as Lake Mary, was the cassava, a tropical-looking plant with an edible root.
Those men who chose not to leave after the freezes ruined the citrus crop found jobs with Planters Manufacturing Co. They produced starches, dextrins, farina and tapioca from the cassava. The plant had been a staple in the diet of tribes living in Central Florida before the arrival of the Spaniards.
The factory was built at this site in 1901. Until imported cassavas made the operation uneconomical in 1909, it was the major employer of the area. The factory was sold to Overstreet Turpentine Company in 1911, then to A.E. Sjoblom in 1916. Later, it housed Perkin's Glue Factory.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. True donated four mill stones from the starch factory, two of which can be seen in front of the Frank Evans Center. One of the homes on Crystal Lake Ave. is built over the bricked-up factory boiler room.
In the 1920s, Sherman and Laura Sewell managed a dance casino owned by Mrs. H.A. Phillips near this site. It also had a large bath house with high and low diving boards.
This is believed to be the oldest home in Lake Mary, built in 1899 in a grove of tall pine trees. It was later known as the Sewell Place, as the Sewells lived in it while they managed the Dance Casino. It was probably built by Charles Farmer, and later modified and renovated.
The company which ran the starch factory also had a hotel on this site, originally built to accommodate company employees. It was sold in 1911 to Overstreet Turpentine Company, which later changed its name to Overstreet Investment Company. Its president, Moses O. Overstreet, became a state senator and donated the land which is now Big Tree Park between Lake Mary and Longwood, the main attraction of which is "The Senator", the largest tree east of the Rockies.
A.E. Sjoblom bought the hotel property from Overstreet on April 17, 1916.
John Bent bought 159 acres here in 1875 for $198 and laid out a citrus grove. His name was applied to the early community which began to grow here.
Axel Evald Sjoblom immigrated here from Sweden in the 1880s, and his business laid the foundation for a new city. When he arrived, the area around Crystal Lake contained a tiny village surrounded by pines and palmettos.
He was a tall man who could often be seen wearing a black derby, black trousers, and black vest over a white shirt, with a gold watch chain stretching across his middle to the vest pocket.
Stories which were circulated about him included chest scars resulting from an alligator encounter and two pistol shots from a drunken customer, survival after a blow to the head by an iron pipe swung by a robber, and stew made by his wife from the rattlesnakes he killed. He worked for a time at the Sanford House hotel and established a lasting business relationship with Henry Sanford.
Sjoblom bought 30 acres and a two-story house here on the eastern shore. All but five acres were destroyed in the severe freeze on January 9, 1886. Sjoblom was able to save these five acres by banking soil high around the tree trunks.
Gen. Henry Shelton Sanford was the U.S. minister to Belgium during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. He came to Mellonville in 1870 to fish and hunt, and decided to stay. He purchased 12,548 acres of land from the state, which became the city of Sanford. His accomplishments included the construction of a hotel, a church, a 600' pier into Lake Monroe, and the planting of large citrus groves, chiefly the St. Gertrude near downtown Sanford and the Belair grove on the northeast shore of Crystal Lake near this spot.
Gen. Sanford planted many varieties of plants including 30,000 exotic trees from Africa and South America. Many died during the chill winters, but oranges flourished. Plant subjects included 140 types of citrus, including blood and Jaffa oranges in the 1880s, neither of which are still extensively cultivated in Florida.
To recruit loggers and farmers, Sanford sent an agent to Sweden to located people willing to work hard for low wages in exchange for the opportunity to emigrate. As each earned the cost of the trip, he was presented with a 5-acre grove. Most settled at New Upsala north of here. Polish and Italian workers were added later. The land later became the property of the Chase family.
The Belair Grove consisted of 145 acres, and Gen. Sanford lived in "The Lodge", a two-story house he had built near the grove. Early maps show the grove in the approximate location of what is now covered by this lake.
Henry Sanford sponsored 150 adults from Sweden to work a year in return for their travel expenses, and those who fulfilled their contracts were given land. The first group of 33 arrived in May of 1871. They founded New Upsala here as the first of five Swedish settlements in Florida, and named it after a university city near Stockholm. Other settlers arrived after paying their own travel expenses.
Many of the settlers worked in Sanford's Belair Grove on the northeast shore of Crystal Lake. Sanford and botanist Carl Leonard Vihlen experimented there with citrus and other imported fruits.
In the early 1890s, the community included about 200 residents and a post office, schoolhouse, Lutheran Church, and other buildings. After the freezes of 1894-95, many of the families left the area and at one point, only 16 families remained. Many of them found jobs at Planters Manufacturing Company, producing many foods from cassava.
This church, a part of the Augustana Lutheran Synod, existed from 1892 to 1946. It served the older settlers brought here to work for Henry Sanford. To memorialize its existence, St. Paul's of Orlando placed this marker on May 18, 1951.
The Swedish immigrants brought here in 1871 by Henry Sanford used this site not only as a cemetery, but also for the Lutheran Church and a meeting house which doubled as a school until 1904. The cemetery is still active, with at least one burial in 2000.
This church was completed on April 16, 1891, by a congregation of Lutheran Swedes who enrolled in the South Florida Presbytery. The building was originally located a little closer to the intersection. The congregation consisted mostly of the younger families of the area, and this congregation often combined with the Lutheran one to the north for social functions. The church was dissolved in 1918.
The church reorganized on December 5, 1949, and in 1951 was renamed Upsala Presbyterian Community Church. The present church building next door was completed on January 19, 1986, and the wooden building was moved to its present location.
A.E. Sjoblom named this section of the village (even though it's not "square") to reflect the hub of activity it became. Just to the south of the intersection, on the west side of Second St., the community's first store was built in about 1890.
The Methodist Episcopal Church organized in 1923 and obtained two lots from A.E. Sjoblom at this location. They built a large wooden sanctuary with the understanding that if it ever ceased to be used for religious activities, it would revert to Sjoblom.
It stopped being used as a church in the late 1920s, and the Sjoblom heirs regained possession. The building was then torn down.
In its place this "modern" house was built for C.S. Donaldson by Marcus, Moses, Will and E.D. Green. It included a bathroom, fireplaces, electricity, hardwood floors, a room with casement windows, a breakfast nook with built-in table and benches, and built-in kitchen cabinets, clothes hamper and china cabinet.
This is one of nine small neighborhood parks platted in 1916 by A.E. Sjoblom for the citizens of Lake Mary.
This was built in 1932 to serve as the post office, with Helen Douglas serving as postmaster from 1932 until 1947. It was built of bricks from Sjoblom's first store.
The church building was the first in the community, constructed here in 1892 by A.E. Sjoblom at his own expense. A Presbyterian congregation was organized on October 14, 1894, by Rev. J.F. Sundell, Rev. H. Keigwan, and Elder Charles Erickson. They bought the building from Sjoblom, and by the 1920s it was known as the Lake Mary Community Church (Presbyterian Government).
It was later vacated by the Presbyterians and became the home for a Pentecostal congregation, with Lee Johnson as pastor. It was later torn down and replaced with a building for the Lake Mary First Church of the Nazarene.
Sjoblom made his mark by opening businesses that offered nearly everything others could need. At this site he bought the store of B. Dougherty and from the early 1900s, he operated a general store. Customers could cash checks and buy lumber, groceries, shoes, cemetery plots and real estate. They could also mail letters at the post office located in the building from 1919 to 1927.
Sjoblom served as Postmaster from 1919 to 1932. From his stores, he also ran a sawmill and orange groves. His sons cleared land and built homes.
Early in the 1920s, A.E. Sjoblom built a brick two-story commercial building at this site. On the ground floor was a garage and filling station operated by his son, Morris Morgan Sjoblom. They sold Goodyear tires and Pan-Am gas and oil. The second floor was living quarters. The business closed in the 1930s.
Behind it was a skating rink, which closed before 1930.
In the later 1920s, A.E. Sjoblom built another two-story brick building to house his store. In appearance, it is nearly identical to Frank Evans' store, which still stands at the corner of Crystal Lake Ave. and Country Club Rd. He moved his grocery and general merchandise stock here from his older store across the street. This also housed the post office from 1927 to 1932, the year in which it was razed.
Fresh water was provided for the village in the 1920s from A.E. Sjoblom's public water works and tank, located near this site.
This was the site of the Lake Mary depot for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The tracks were laid in 1880, and the station stood here from 1901 to 1942.
The land for this cemetery was donated by Judge David J. Pulling and his wife, Susan, in 1894. Due east of the gazebo you can see the headstones of members of the Evans family, and to the south of that, those of the Sjobloms and Sundells. The first burial was that of Carl Lundquist, in 1895.
Just to the east of the cemetery, south of the railroad tracks, were the houses of William N. Webster and Bertie C. Martin, which also doubled as the post offices while their owners served as postmaster. Webster served from 1887 to 1906 (with a portion of the time having the post office behind Sjoblom's first store), and Martin served from 1906 to 1919.
The lake which gives the city its name is probably named after Mary Sundell. She was married to Rev. J.F. Sundell who, with Rev. H. Keigwan, organized the Presbyterian congregation in 1894. Rev. Sundell had been the pastor of the Upsala Presbyterian Community Church.
Frank Evans cleared land on the west shore of Lake Mary, and named it Evansdale Park. In the 1920s, he developed a residential subdivision with the same name.
The park included a bath house, swimming dock and pavilion, and provided an early center for outdoor community activities. The first community Easter sunrise services were held there on May 17, 1927, and they continue today on Evans' lakeside homestead.
In the beginning, this community was named Bent's Station after John Bent, who bought 159 acres in 1875. Also known as Bents, and then Lake Mary, it was not incorporated until 1973.
The site was the location of a school, built in 1885 on land donated by Niles Tanner. William H. Evans designed it and supervised its construction, which cost $449. This replaced the first school, which was a log cabin owned by Augustus Adams. The school closed in the fall of 1920.
The present City Hall was dedicated on July 14, 1990.
This land was donated by A.E. Sjoblom and Frank Evans for the construction of a grammar school. Evans arranged the financing, Frank Lossing of Sanford agreed to build it for $11,378, and it was completed in 1925. The school was rebuilt in 1987.
In the 1920s, Lake Mary piano students studied under Mrs. J.R. Houghton, who taught in her home which stood here until the late 1990s.
The area to the west of this intersection was known as Crystal Lake Shores, developed by Charles R. Sibley of Boston and Sanford. Across Lakeview Ave. he erected an archway of stucco and bright colored glass to publicize the development.
A common style of the 1920s was Spanish, with stuccoed exterior. This home is a good example of that style, built by Charles R. Sibley. It was the home of the Crystal Lake Dining Parlor, later called Jerome's Restaurant, and then became a private residence.
This two-story home was built in the mid-1920s by Charles R. Sibley and Charles S. Emerson. The Emersons' grandson, who visited here frequently, is Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space.
Out of bricks salvaged from A.E. Sjoblom's former general store, Frank Evans built this two-story building. Over the years, it has housed real estate offices, a grocery store, a barber shop, a variety store, and Dr. O.J. Miller's Drug and Sundry Store, which opened in 1926.
As a young boy, Frank Evans lived on 8th St. in Sanford. His father, Dr. William Harrison Evans, brought the family from Ohio to this part of Florida in the early 1880s. The doctor practiced medicine in Sanford, operated a drug store, and was elected mayor of Sanford in 1889. He planted a 50-acre grove on the south shore of Crystal Lake.
The family moved back to Ohio, and returned to Sanford in the late 1890s. The doctor was reelected mayor three times, and is credited with helping to keep Sanford safe during a yellow fever outbreak. Young Frank was not interested in his father's practice or businesses, and instead yearned to join the circus. He learned to walk a tightrope in his backyard, and performed before audiences in New York and New England.
Dr. Evans retired to a home in Lake Mary, but Frank instead traveled. He enlisted in a guard unit in Orlando during the Spanish-American War, worked for a Texas railroad, worked for the Sanford Ice Company, and lived in Massachusetts in the early 1900s.
When he returned to Lake Mary in the early 1920s, he bought up mortgages and acquired properties through foreclosure. He advertised and promoted the growing village, and produced plays and performances. He was the founder of the chamber of commerce in January of 1923, and became a Seminole County commissioner in 1926.
In 1926, Frank Evans built this hall for meetings of the Chamber of Commerce and other community gatherings. Later, it was owned by Otis Sjoblom, who sold it to the city for use as the city hall.
One of its current features is a small museum open to the public, with photographs and memorabilia from the early days of Lake Mary. It is open weekdays, but arrangements may be made in advance to accommodate groups on weekends.
A Sightseeing Tour of Seminole County Historic Sites, by Seminole County Historical Commission (1991)
Early Days of Seminole County, Florida, by Arthur E. Franke, Jr. (Seminole County Historical Commission 1988)
Flashbacks: The Story of Central Florida's Past, by Jim Robison and Mark Andrews (The Orlando Sentinel 1995)
History of Development in Orange and Seminole Counties, by Orange-Seminole Joint Planning Commission (1966)
Lake Mary's Beginnings, by Margaret Sprout Green (The Mickler House 1986)