Cloudy Cross Creek

Mom and Dad Ephemera live a half hour from Cross Creek, and I've wanted to stop by this old Florida town for some time. And since I started an Old Florida Facebook page, I'm always looking for new images from Florida's past.

Cross Creek is home to author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the town doesn't appear to have changed much since she wrote about it in her novels. My first stop was her house, and on this cloudy day the interior was closed for maintenance. I took that as a good sign for two reasons: 1.) I'll have to visit again when it's open, and 2.) In these days of every tightening state budgets, they can still afford to maintain this wonderful Cracker home (her home is a state park).

Rawlings moved to this rural community in North Central Florida in 1928. On the front porch of this house she wrote her literary classic The Yearling. Today you can see her home and farm much like it was when she was there.

Chicken and ducks wander the citrus grove near Rawlings House

Rawlings barn still houses a tractor and much
of the equipment used to keep up the farm

A yellow 1940 Oldsmobile is parked in the carport

Looking towards the house from the barn

Screen doors and screen porches made living in Florida
in the days before air conditioning tolerable

The garden behind the house

The tenant house was home to the help that worked for Rawlings.
Idella Parker, Rawlings' maid, claimed that fellow Florida writer
Zora Neale Hurston visited Rawlings and stayed in the tenant house.


The front porch of the tenant house

Down the road from Rawlings home is the Yearling Restaurant, a Florida institution I remember fondly from childhood. I recall dining on fried catfish, softshell turtle and frog legs. Oh and delicious hush puppies! Re-opened after being closed for a lengthy period, the parking lot was full on this Labor Day weekend. Another place I'll have to return to for a more in-depth visit.

Further down the road I stopped to photograph the sign for Twin Lakes Fish Camp. Florida's rivers and lakes used to have an abundance of places like this, as sportsmen were drawn to fish and hunt in the state's wilder regions. Today they are rare survivors from a simpler times.


Beyond Cross Creek lies the small town of Evinston, home to the state's oldest post office located in its small general store. The US Postal Service, in retraction mode as the market for "snail mail" continues to shrink, is planning to close the little office, which may be the death of the town. And so it goes for Old Florida in the 21st century.

More fish camp images of Lake Apopka

From the State Archives of Florida

From fishin' to phosphorous to fishin'?

As a kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, I grew up liking chains. I loved franchised stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. because that's where everyone else went and I wanted to be like them. My dad, however, liked to get off the interstate at some little town, drive to the town square, and eat at the greasiest little diner he could find. As a kid I was horrified. Only today do I see my father's wisdom.

So I don't have fond childhood memories of the trip when we stayed in a fish camp on the St. Johns River. I remember boredom, summer heat and lots of fried, bony fish. The fish camp was called Angler's Paradise and it was located in Georgetown, Florida. I would have preferred to stay in a Holiday Inn with a pool and vending machines near an interstate and a McDonalds.

But as I matured and spent more time on the river, I learned to appreciate the subtle beauty of the St. Johns and now I see fish camps like Angler's Paradise as vintage Florida. There were several fish camps around our place in Welaka Florida including Andersons, which as far as I know is still in operation and has a great little restaurant on a bluff overlooking the river.

Fish camps were a big deal in Florida's tourist past and a great example was Lake Apopka, Florida's fourth largest lake. According to Wikipedia Lake Apopka was one of of Central Florida's main attractions through the 1940s, boasting 21 fish camps from where guests could pursue the quest for trophy largemouth bass. Lake Apopka is connected to a chain of lakes that extends northward  from Orange County into Lake County and eventually connects to the beautiful Oklawaha River.

The sad part of this tale is that in addition to fish camps, Lake Apopka also shared its shores with industry and large farms which contaminated the lake to the point that the aquatic life that once supported the fish camps could no longer survive. And the pollution of Lake Apopka spread through  many of the lakes throughout the chain.

But they are taking efforts to try to clean up the Lake Apopka and the rest of the Harris chain of lakes. Starting in the late '80s, clean-up projects have been under way to reduce the elevated phosphorous levels caused by runoff into the lake. In March, a water treatment facility will begin operation aimed at treating the dirty water. With any luck, maybe the lake will be able to support trophy bass again. 

Vintage images are from the archives of the State of Florida