I went to a Winter Garden history talk at the WG Heritage Foundation …
Recent history began in the 1890s, with the city established in the 1900s, doing very well through the 1950s with tourism fishing on the lake, and loads of vegetable and orange growing – the two downtown railroads shipping goods north … And then the lake got too polluted, the orange trees were killed by repeated frosts and the new bigger roads bypassed downtown … By the end of the 1980s downtown businesses were mostly gone.
But a few people worked to save it, rescuing local buildings and getting the West Orange Trail through downtown, and much more to get us where we are now …
UPDATE: Winter Garden Heritage has posted the complete hour long video on YouTube.
Then I walked back, past the live music in the middle of Plant St, past long lines at ice-cream Scoops, past many busy restaurants, past City Hall doing Halloween with a scary maze to explore, past Plant Street Market / Crooked Can celebrating Oktoberfest … Amazing to see how vibrant downtown is now, compared to what is was only 20-25 years ago!
I went back into town this morning to take some daytime photos of the halloween maze:
M&I / GBMINI 