Be sure to take in my store above just for a quick look…please I have some great stuff.

This weekend I had a meeting in Deltona (unless you live in Central Florida you probably never heard of it) and got there early, so I wandered around and I found (it didn’t know it was lost) Enterprise, a town  allot old and a bit new and a so very lost between the two.

Enterprise is an unincorporated community in Volusia County, in the U.S. state of Florida, and its former county seat. Situated on the northern shore of Lake Monroe, it is flanked by the cities of DeBary and Deltona. Enterprise was once the head of navigation on the St. Johns River and at various times, the county seat for three counties: Mosquito, Orange, and Volusia…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise,_Florida

Enterprise developed around a plantation built by Cornelius Taylor in the early 1800s.  The plantations (there were many) that developed in the area took advantage of the high price of sugar and the St. Johns river provided the highway to ship the product to the world.  By the 1840’s smaller farms grew corn, peas and sweet potato crops.  

By the time Florida became a state Enterprise had been the county seat of Orange (it’s now in Volusia) for at least two years.

But steam boats brought tourists too and by the early 1850’s Enterprise boasted the Brock Hotel (named  and built for  the Captain who owned several of the steamers) and shared (with Sanford–by 1850’s  the county seat) the title of southernmost  city for the steam lines.  FLASHBACKS  By J. Robison and M. Andrews

But the arrival of the rail road made the boats and Enterprise obsolete and Florida’s boom ended a few years before the Great Depression.  

Today the hotel grounds are occupied by the Methodist Children’s Home, the All Saint’s Episcopal Church one of the few original buildings to remain, a lovely reminder of the town’s great glories.

and GOOGLE HAS ENTERPRISE COLLECTIBLES

1999 Favorite Recipes Cook Book Stone Island Residents +friends  $10

ALERT TO COLLECTORS:  1969 Hot Wheels Volkswagen Beach Bomb, a bus with surfboards on the back has sold for as high as $30,000.  Or a 1920’s Raggedy Ann doll for as high as $4,000

If you go to the end of Clark St. (in Enterprise) you an still see a dozen pylons of Brock’s pier that remain as if awaiting the steamboats that will never come again.  BEST BACKROADS OF FLORIDA by D. Waitley

Look back, and smile on perils past.—Walter Scott