'FloridaPast Attractions'
'one click at a time'
It's our hope, that you take a moment to reflect & enjoy, these mirrors of FloridaPast.
We will do our Very Best to Give you Interesting and Fun Glimpses into FloridaPast.
Some of the images are Links to Our Famed Now & Then Fades.
All will open in new window.
We will do our Very Best to Give you Interesting and Fun Glimpses into FloridaPast.
Some of the images are Links to Our Famed Now & Then Fades.
All will open in new window.
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FloridaPast Facebook
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Click on Smiley to visit FloridaPast on Facebook Daily.
You'll be sure to find interesting shares. |
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Silver Springs - Ocala
Thanks to Heath Burthwick for allowing us to use and share his great photo of Silver Springs New York World's Fair Ox and Wagon
Click on the image for a Wonderful Now & Then Fade
Click on the image for a Wonderful Now & Then Fade
The Various Welcome Entrances of Silver Springs Through the Years
Click anyone of them, and you'll visit our Famed Now & Then Fade
a Colorful Entrance to Silver Springs FloridaPast - Click for a Now & Then Fade
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Entrance to Silver Springs 1930s Era
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Gram'ma and Gram'pa's first visit to Silver Springs
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Click the Little Seminole Boy at Silver Springs
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Smile Nice for the Camera Sis
 Jane Russell Welcomes Your Visit to Silver Springs. Click me, and let's go! |
Momma and her children in awe at the stone fountain entrance
Taking Turns Taking Pictures while Mom Peeks around the fountain
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Dad photographing memories of the family's visit to Silver Springs
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Many a photograph was snapped here - click to see a great now & then fade
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The Classic West View of Silver Springs Entrance 1950s
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Take a moment, and visit the FloridaPast Facebook thread where we posted this. And we'll learn who the Gent is that is taking the photograph here.
John T. McEarchern III tells us; "My Dad taking the picture!!" "He Worked there for over 10 years. Notice the Shirt!!"
John T. McEarchern III tells us; "My Dad taking the picture!!" "He Worked there for over 10 years. Notice the Shirt!!"
 It's a Must to Visit Silver Springs, FloridaPast |
 Ross Allen's BUTCH & BEAUTY Macaws, at Silver Springs, FloridaPast |
Clicking this image will bring you to FloridaPast Facebook Album of Silver Springs
 This is the life! A Nice Peaceful Cruise through Silver Springs, FloridaPast |
 We Will Stay ALL DAY, here at Silver Springs |
 Florida's Famous Glass Bottom Boats |
_____________________________ Ross Milking a Rattlesnake - WANT SOME JUICE FOLKS?!! |
 Step right up Folks, Free Samples for all! - Ross Allen, a Big Part of FloridaPast - Milk That Rattlesnake Ross |
The following two images are of an original Live Reptile Shipping Crate, courtesy and permission to use by Jake Burchell of Facebook.
Thanking Jake Burchell for the use of his photos
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remnants of an old paper label reads; "Warning: avoid exposure to excessive heat"
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Off-Shoot Attractions that surrounded Silver Springs Attraction
The Colorful era of the 1960s History on Wheels Museum
Early 1950s Serenity at the Carriage Cavalcade
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Across street view from Silver Springs Old Entrance
1950s era, photographing a Sweet Dixie Belle with the Museum across 40
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The Early American Museum was once known as the Carriage Calvacade. Vernon Jarvis owned a collection of roughly 100 antique carriages and various other motor cars. Sometime during the 1980s era, the estate sold the collection to the Silver Springs Attraction. Which moved the museum to the old Morrison's Cafeteria building on park grounds. The original curator of the museum was Sidney Strong. Sometime later, the position was held by Dick Mauller.
WhatWasInThere
Our Famed Now & Then Fades Withing The Boundaries of Silver Springs
Angelic 110 Year Old Aunt Lucilda at Silver Springs FloridaPast - Departing the Riverboat
A bit about Aunt Silla aka, Aunt Lucilida and her legend.
"One hundred and ten years young. Featured in the legend of Silver Springs. She lived in a wooded cottage and hobbled about during the day, telling those that she chanced to meet, the tragic story of Claire Douglass and Bernice Mayo. Although she repeated the story to thousands of folks who visited Silver Springs, her account had never varied.
According to the legend handed down by Aunt Silla, there stood near the site of old Fort King, sometime in the early 1880s or before, the plantation manor of Captain Harding Douglass, a wealthy and aristocratic cotton baron whose broad and fertile acres stretched away to the horizon upon either hand.
Bound by the indomitable will of Captain Douglass like every other member of his household, was an only son, Claire, who possessed the poetic temperament of his mother, estranged from Captain Douglass. Claire found relief from the imperious nature of his father in hunting and outdoor sports which caused him to frequent the woods and waters of Silver Springs. One day as he lolled upon the bank beside the deep, clear water, Claire heard a twig snap behind him and turned to catch a fleeting glimpse of what appeared a golden-haired wood nymph disappear down the path toward Aunt Silla's cabin, and although he gave chase and drew up panting in from of the cabin, she had gone entirely and the gnome-like features of Aunt Silla gave no hind of having seen here.
After similar meetings when upon closer view, Claire seemed to recognize his forest wraith, he learned that this lady of his dreams with whom he had fallen instantly and desperately in love, was no filament of the imagination as he half feared at first, but a real and vibrant young woman of exquisite charm and beauty, despite her poor circumstances, who bore the name of Bernice Mayo and had but recently come from Sanford to make her home with an aunt in Ocala. - That she was Aunt Silla's "honey child", was due to the fact that the old colored woman once nursed her through a severe illness and accounted for Bernice being seen so frequently at Aunt Silla's cabin where the latter was wont to read her fortune in the cards and foretell a future of wedded bliss in the big white house on the hill with a handsome young gentleman answering the description of Claire Douglass, for Silla was really quite fond of Claire.
Therefore it required only a little cajolery on his part to bring about a meeting with Bernice which soon ripened into mutual love and a constant companionship which had as its trysting place the cabin of old Aunt Silla or the big Boiling Spring - which is what's called "The Bridal Chamber" -
where they were wont to sit in Silla's boat for house, watch the spring and dream. Then came that day of all days when Bernice promised Claire to become his wife, when for want of the usual ring to bind their engagement, he slipped upon her wrist a little bracelet with which he had planned to surprise her. They were happy in their great love which promised to endure until death wile they swore no power on earth could ever separate them.
But they reckoned without Claire's stern father who objected strenuously to his son marrying a poor girl and contrived to send the youth away to Europe in company with a wealthy cousin and her chaperon in near his own station in life.
When Claire took leave of his betrothed, he promised to write ever day and return soon to claim her for his bride, but Captain Douglass continued upon some pretext or other to prolong his stay abroad and intercept the letters that passed between them with the result that days lengthened into months and when nearly a whole year had passed without word of her beloved, Bernice pined away and became ill of the all-consuming grief that ate her heart away.
Even Aunt Silla was unprepared for the emaciated little shadow that appeared at the door when, realizing she was going to die, Bernice dragged herself to the cabin at Silver Springs where she had spent so many happy hours with Claire, and there upon her deathbed she exacted a promise from the old colored woman who knelt sobbing at her side, a promise so weird and awful that Silla shivered and drew here shawl closer about her shoulders as she sealed it with a kiss upon the fevered brow of the dying girl, whom she once saved from a dangerous illness, but was powerless to aid now. In the dead of night while only the stars looked on and the doleful hooting of an owl broke the eerie silence, Silla bundled the limp body of Bernice Mayo in a sack and carried it to her bateau moored to a tree at the water's edge. Tenderly and lovingly she deposited it in th boat and with her gnarled and withered hands paddled slowly to the Boiling Spring where she lowered all that was mortal of Bernice Mayo into the rocky crevice below. She had fulfilled her promise.
Upon the morrow, Claire Douglass returned. It was the date they had set more than a year before, the day he and Bernice were to have been married had everything gone as they planned and their hopes not been frustrated by parental interference. Small consolation that, when he had not heard from her in a whole year although he had written regularly as he promised. He supposed she had found a new sweetheart in his absence, one she loved more than himself. Women were fickle like that, had he not often heard his father say? - He would have just one more look at the Boiling Springs he and Bernice had loved so much to watch, before returning home to pay court to the wealthy cousin his father had chosen for his wife. Aunt Silla sat with downcast eyes in her boat at the bank. Throughout the long night she had sat like that, scarcely moving, and she did not raise her eyes or respond to Claire's greeting when he clambered into the boat and steered toward the Boiling Springs where, allowing the boat to drift, he peered deep down into the crevices of the rock eighty feet beneath him. Suddenly he started in horror at the sight of a woman's hand protruding from the rocks, for upon the wrist he recognized through the crystal-clear water the bracelet he had given Bernice.
Straight down into the cavern he dove and though the pressure of the deep water pained his ears terribly and his lungs felt as if they would burst, forced himself to the bottom and into the rocky crevice until he could seize Bernice's arm. Vainly he strove to raise the dead weight of her body was caught in the rock and try as he would he could not dislodge it. Then he drew himself down beside her and clasped her dad body to him in an embrace that has defied time and elements, for Aunt Silla swore that when he did so the rocks opened up to receive these unhappy lovers to the bosom of Mother Earth, then closed again over their dead bodies and people do say their bones still repose there."
"One hundred and ten years young. Featured in the legend of Silver Springs. She lived in a wooded cottage and hobbled about during the day, telling those that she chanced to meet, the tragic story of Claire Douglass and Bernice Mayo. Although she repeated the story to thousands of folks who visited Silver Springs, her account had never varied.
According to the legend handed down by Aunt Silla, there stood near the site of old Fort King, sometime in the early 1880s or before, the plantation manor of Captain Harding Douglass, a wealthy and aristocratic cotton baron whose broad and fertile acres stretched away to the horizon upon either hand.
Bound by the indomitable will of Captain Douglass like every other member of his household, was an only son, Claire, who possessed the poetic temperament of his mother, estranged from Captain Douglass. Claire found relief from the imperious nature of his father in hunting and outdoor sports which caused him to frequent the woods and waters of Silver Springs. One day as he lolled upon the bank beside the deep, clear water, Claire heard a twig snap behind him and turned to catch a fleeting glimpse of what appeared a golden-haired wood nymph disappear down the path toward Aunt Silla's cabin, and although he gave chase and drew up panting in from of the cabin, she had gone entirely and the gnome-like features of Aunt Silla gave no hind of having seen here.
After similar meetings when upon closer view, Claire seemed to recognize his forest wraith, he learned that this lady of his dreams with whom he had fallen instantly and desperately in love, was no filament of the imagination as he half feared at first, but a real and vibrant young woman of exquisite charm and beauty, despite her poor circumstances, who bore the name of Bernice Mayo and had but recently come from Sanford to make her home with an aunt in Ocala. - That she was Aunt Silla's "honey child", was due to the fact that the old colored woman once nursed her through a severe illness and accounted for Bernice being seen so frequently at Aunt Silla's cabin where the latter was wont to read her fortune in the cards and foretell a future of wedded bliss in the big white house on the hill with a handsome young gentleman answering the description of Claire Douglass, for Silla was really quite fond of Claire.
Therefore it required only a little cajolery on his part to bring about a meeting with Bernice which soon ripened into mutual love and a constant companionship which had as its trysting place the cabin of old Aunt Silla or the big Boiling Spring - which is what's called "The Bridal Chamber" -
where they were wont to sit in Silla's boat for house, watch the spring and dream. Then came that day of all days when Bernice promised Claire to become his wife, when for want of the usual ring to bind their engagement, he slipped upon her wrist a little bracelet with which he had planned to surprise her. They were happy in their great love which promised to endure until death wile they swore no power on earth could ever separate them.
But they reckoned without Claire's stern father who objected strenuously to his son marrying a poor girl and contrived to send the youth away to Europe in company with a wealthy cousin and her chaperon in near his own station in life.
When Claire took leave of his betrothed, he promised to write ever day and return soon to claim her for his bride, but Captain Douglass continued upon some pretext or other to prolong his stay abroad and intercept the letters that passed between them with the result that days lengthened into months and when nearly a whole year had passed without word of her beloved, Bernice pined away and became ill of the all-consuming grief that ate her heart away.
Even Aunt Silla was unprepared for the emaciated little shadow that appeared at the door when, realizing she was going to die, Bernice dragged herself to the cabin at Silver Springs where she had spent so many happy hours with Claire, and there upon her deathbed she exacted a promise from the old colored woman who knelt sobbing at her side, a promise so weird and awful that Silla shivered and drew here shawl closer about her shoulders as she sealed it with a kiss upon the fevered brow of the dying girl, whom she once saved from a dangerous illness, but was powerless to aid now. In the dead of night while only the stars looked on and the doleful hooting of an owl broke the eerie silence, Silla bundled the limp body of Bernice Mayo in a sack and carried it to her bateau moored to a tree at the water's edge. Tenderly and lovingly she deposited it in th boat and with her gnarled and withered hands paddled slowly to the Boiling Spring where she lowered all that was mortal of Bernice Mayo into the rocky crevice below. She had fulfilled her promise.
Upon the morrow, Claire Douglass returned. It was the date they had set more than a year before, the day he and Bernice were to have been married had everything gone as they planned and their hopes not been frustrated by parental interference. Small consolation that, when he had not heard from her in a whole year although he had written regularly as he promised. He supposed she had found a new sweetheart in his absence, one she loved more than himself. Women were fickle like that, had he not often heard his father say? - He would have just one more look at the Boiling Springs he and Bernice had loved so much to watch, before returning home to pay court to the wealthy cousin his father had chosen for his wife. Aunt Silla sat with downcast eyes in her boat at the bank. Throughout the long night she had sat like that, scarcely moving, and she did not raise her eyes or respond to Claire's greeting when he clambered into the boat and steered toward the Boiling Springs where, allowing the boat to drift, he peered deep down into the crevices of the rock eighty feet beneath him. Suddenly he started in horror at the sight of a woman's hand protruding from the rocks, for upon the wrist he recognized through the crystal-clear water the bracelet he had given Bernice.
Straight down into the cavern he dove and though the pressure of the deep water pained his ears terribly and his lungs felt as if they would burst, forced himself to the bottom and into the rocky crevice until he could seize Bernice's arm. Vainly he strove to raise the dead weight of her body was caught in the rock and try as he would he could not dislodge it. Then he drew himself down beside her and clasped her dad body to him in an embrace that has defied time and elements, for Aunt Silla swore that when he did so the rocks opened up to receive these unhappy lovers to the bosom of Mother Earth, then closed again over their dead bodies and people do say their bones still repose there."
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"If you want to see the Boiling Springs Ladies Parlor, Take a Boat"
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Folks have many memories and stories of Silver Springs, especially Ross Allen's Reptile Institute. CLICK HERE to read some of them on Old Florida's Facebook Share of this Wonderful Image.
__ Here is a Nice informative site about Ross Allen and his reptile institute at Silver Springs. Some cool images here as well. __ |
Click photo to see WhatWasInThere at Ross Allen's Reptile Institute Silver Springs
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Glimpses of WhatWasInThere at Silver Springs' Indian Village
Meet Smoke'n George Osceola, Seminole Indian Wise Man of Silver Springs FloridaPast
PARADISE PARK - SILVER SPRINGS OCALA
For Colored Folks Only
give a click to see where this billboard stands
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the entrance off of 40 in Ocala, Silver Springs - Click to see where
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Above are a couple of billboards for Paradise Park, which was a segregated African-American Attraction. And was located about 1 mile down the Silver River from Silver Springs. Seven Miles east of Ocala on Road 40.
We would have seen the billboard here,(left) at the intersection of U.S. 301 and U.S. 441 as we head toward Ocala. And the sign on right would be as we turn off of 40 at Silver Springs.
Paradise Park was developed by a man named Carl Ray and W.M. "Shorty" Davidson, both Co-owners of the famed Silver Springs for nearly forty years. Paradise Park opened May 20, 1949 and stayed open until 1969.
African-American families, church groups, and tourists came from all over Florida and the United States to visit.
We would have seen the billboard here,(left) at the intersection of U.S. 301 and U.S. 441 as we head toward Ocala. And the sign on right would be as we turn off of 40 at Silver Springs.
Paradise Park was developed by a man named Carl Ray and W.M. "Shorty" Davidson, both Co-owners of the famed Silver Springs for nearly forty years. Paradise Park opened May 20, 1949 and stayed open until 1969.
African-American families, church groups, and tourists came from all over Florida and the United States to visit.
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6 GUN TERRITORY
A 6 Gun Territory Promotional Decal, from back in the FloridaPast Daze
Some Excellent Vintage Films/Videos
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Click on the train, and travel back to a Now & Then Fade
Visit any of the following links, for some wonderful history that other folks compiled about Six Gun Territory in Ocala.
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 A WONDERFUL VISIT TO THE SEAQUARIUM - MIAMI FloridaPast  BEAUTIFUL SUNKEN GARDENS - Well Worth The Visit! Still has the appeal of FloridaPast  The Famous 'Wedding Chapel' Sunkin Gardens, FloridaPast  What would FloridaPast be without Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Shows  - ROADSIDE TEPEE - Pinnellas Park, FloridaPast |
 There you have it, the Bare Bonz' of the Beachs of FloridaPast, St. Pete  How Graceful  CHILD SAFETY VILLAGE - U.S.A., Tampa FloridaPast - What a Fun Place this must've been!  Come, take a Romantic Ride with me, up in the Jungle of the Suwannee River, FloridaPast |
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Don't Miss Homosassa Springs
Nature's Own Attraction
This made for a Beautiful Now & Then Fade when you Click It
 What Wonders we see at Homosassa Springs, FloridaPast |
 Come play with the Monkeys, at Monkey Island, Homosassa Springs, FloridaPast |
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SPOOK HILL - LAKE WALES
knock on the trunk lid, and you too, will experience Spook Hill
"Sign at Spook Hill in Lake Wales Florida"
Bang your cursor on the sign, and go back to that particular time
The photo above, "Sign at Spook Hill in Lake Wales Florida" was taken in the year of 1953. We borrowed this Cool Photo, and the bio for the Photographer, from FloridaMemoryProject to share.
Biography Note of Photographer;
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The Legends of Spook Hill
Spook Hill;
A gravity hill, which gives an optical illusion, where cars appear to roll up hill. Located in Lake Wales, Florida, adjacent to the School. Which was named, Spook Hill Elementary School. Spook Hill is located on the Lake Wales Ridge, a geologically significant range of sand and limestone hills, which were islands from two to three million years ago, when sea levels were much higher than at present. 
Better watch out, these Gals can Shout... SPOOKY HILL - See for yourself
 Prather's Laundry Capitalized on the Spook Hill Attraction |
So Much More to See of FloridaPast, so keep on follow'in me
If you wanna skip around to other parts of your tour, without following Wally Gator
you can use either of these FloridaPast Tour Links to get you there.
Wally doesn't like when his Tour leaves to go their own way. So he may snip at ya'll.
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Begining of your Tour/Highway-2/Highway-3-Natural Scenes/Highway-4-Roadside Hotels & Motels/Highway-5-Past Attractions/Highway-6-Citrus Farming Tour/Highway-7-Historical Images
Highway-8-Seminole Indians Tour/Seminole Indians Musa Isle Tour 8-b/
you can use either of these FloridaPast Tour Links to get you there.
Wally doesn't like when his Tour leaves to go their own way. So he may snip at ya'll.
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Begining of your Tour/Highway-2/Highway-3-Natural Scenes/Highway-4-Roadside Hotels & Motels/Highway-5-Past Attractions/Highway-6-Citrus Farming Tour/Highway-7-Historical Images
Highway-8-Seminole Indians Tour/Seminole Indians Musa Isle Tour 8-b/
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