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'FloridaPast Attractions'

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'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.


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FloridaPast Facebook
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

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The Various Welcome Entrances of Silver Springs Through the Years
Click anyone of them, and you'll visit our Famed Now & Then Fade

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a Colorful Entrance to Silver Springs FloridaPast - Click for a Now & Then Fade
Click to visit our Famed Now & Then Fade
Entrance to Silver Springs 1930s Era
Click to visit a Now and Then Fade
Gram'ma and Gram'pa's first visit to Silver Springs
Click the little Seminole boy to see him back on the grounds of Silver Springs
Click the Little Seminole Boy at Silver Springs
Click this Classic Image to Visit a Now & Then
Smile Nice for the Camera Sis
It's no wonder why Silver Springs was a BIG ATTRACTION
Jane Russell Welcomes Your Visit to Silver Springs. Click me, and let's go!
Give a click to visit now, then, and back again
Momma and her children in awe at the stone fountain entrance
Click on the fountain, and we'll go back where it was
Taking Turns Taking Pictures while Mom Peeks around the fountain
Click to see a Now & Then Fade
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
Take a moment, click this classic image, and see a Now & Then
click like a camera, and fade from then till now
The Classic West View of Silver Springs Entrance 1950s
 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!!"


A Beautiful Visit at Silver Springs, Ocala FloridaPast
It's a Must to Visit Silver Springs, FloridaPast
The Color of Beauty - Here at FloridaPast
Ross Allen's BUTCH & BEAUTY Macaws, at Silver Springs, FloridaPast
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Clicking this image will bring you to FloridaPast Facebook Album of Silver Springs
Will you join me on a cruise this morning? The weather is Just Right!
This is the life! A Nice Peaceful Cruise through Silver Springs, FloridaPast
Morning till evening, we will sit back, sip Southern Style Ice Teas, with a little Long Island N.Y. Recipe, and ENJOY Silver Springs, FloridaPast
We Will Stay ALL DAY, here at Silver Springs
Famous Glass Bottom Boats - Silver Springs, Florida
Florida's Famous Glass Bottom Boats

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FREE JUICE for one and All!  STEP RIGHT UP FOLKS!
Ross Milking a Rattlesnake - WANT SOME JUICE FOLKS?!!
A Glass of Florida Rattlesnake Juice, every morning, will definately get you slithering
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.
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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"

Off-Shoot Attractions that surrounded Silver Springs Attraction

Tap the image to see Then & Now
The Colorful era of the 1960s History on Wheels Museum
Click for a Perfect Fitting-Fade
Early 1950s Serenity at the Carriage Cavalcade
Click to see a Perfect Fitting-Fade Now Then & Back Again
Across street view from Silver Springs Old Entrance
Give a click, and see where you are
1950s era, photographing a Sweet Dixie Belle with the Museum across 40

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

Click to Go Inside Silver Springs Today and Yesterday
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."

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Click for a Faded Visit
"If you want to see the Boiling Springs Ladies Parlor, Take a Boat"
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.
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Here is a Nice informative site about Ross Allen and his reptile institute at Silver Springs. Some cool images here as well.
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Click photo to see WhatWasInThere at Ross Allen's Reptile Institute Silver Springs

Glimpses of WhatWasInThere at Silver Springs' Indian Village

Click on George to visit Inside Silver Springs
Meet Smoke'n George Osceola, Seminole Indian Wise Man of Silver Springs FloridaPast

PARADISE PARK - SILVER SPRINGS OCALA
​For Colored Folks Only

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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
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.

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6 GUN TERRITORY

Shoot em up - BaNG BaNG - YeeeHaww
A 6 Gun Territory Promotional Decal, from back in the FloridaPast Daze

Some Excellent Vintage Films/Videos
For Six Gun Territory
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Super 8 footage of Six Gun Territory, a now defunct amusement park in Ocala Florida. The "theme" of this park was an 1880's western town



​​1970 Road Trip Part 6 - Silver Springs & Six Gun Territory - Ocala, Florida



​Six Gun Territory
Western Theme Park Ocala Florida
​Opening on Feb. 2, 1963

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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.
OCALA STAR BANNER 1979 - a great illustrated article

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Click this text to see a Full Length Video of Six Gun Territory
 in it's prime, preserved by FloridaMemoryProject

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The Closed Six Gun Territory Florida Expedition Extinct

1964 Six Gun Territory Ocala, Florida
"Lewis Fussell, wife Charline (Hester) Fussell, daughter Cyndi Fussell,
son Steve Fussell, niece Shelley Pennington, along with Charline's mom, Vernia Hester, and Lewis' Mom, Ellie Fussell,
visiting Six Gun Territory in Ocala, Florida.
8mm film shot by Lewis Fussell (no audio).
"

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So Beautiful are the Days of FloridaPast
A WONDERFUL VISIT TO THE SEAQUARIUM - MIAMI FloridaPast
Ahhhhh.... you can smell the sweet aromas of this Garden of Eden
BEAUTIFUL SUNKEN GARDENS - Well Worth The Visit! Still has the appeal of FloridaPast
How many I DOs do you think were exchanged on this spot??
The Famous 'Wedding Chapel' Sunkin Gardens, FloridaPast
Where is this sign??
What would FloridaPast be without Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Shows
anybody wanna buy a beach chair?
- ROADSIDE TEPEE - Pinnellas Park, FloridaPast
But but, mister pooleece man, we are on beach
There you have it, the Bare Bonz' of the Beachs of FloridaPast, St. Pete
Wanna play ball with me?
How Graceful
What yah think Sis, should we go in?
CHILD SAFETY VILLAGE - U.S.A., Tampa FloridaPast - What a Fun Place this must've been!
FloridaPast - JUNGLE DRIVE - Suwanee River on U.S. Highway 19, 98 & Alt. 127.
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

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This made for a Beautiful Now & Then Fade when you Click It
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A Wonderful presentation of Homosassa History can be found by Clicking Here. Some Fantastic Old Photographs, showing what was once, with history.
How many fishies do you think are in there Mommy?
What Wonders we see at Homosassa Springs, FloridaPast
MONKEY ISLAND STILL EXISTS TODAY - KLICK THE BARREL OF MONKEYS & LEARN MORE About this FloridaPast Attraction
Come play with the Monkeys, at Monkey Island, Homosassa Springs, FloridaPast

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SPOOK HILL - LAKE WALES

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Click to Visit Spook Hill Now & Then
knock on the trunk lid, and you too, will experience Spook Hill

"Sign at Spook Hill in Lake Wales Florida"

bang on the sign, and go back to another time
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;
  • From the photo collection of Robert S. Nihoul who was born 30 Jan 1919, Pomona Park, Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1940 and enlisted in the US Navy in 1941. Served in the South Pacific in WW II and in Korea during the Korean War. He retired with the rank of Master Chief, USN in 1962. Robert was a avid amateur photographer and documented his WW II and Korean War service in film. His photograph albums were donated to the U.S. Library of Congress Veteran's History Project and are available for research. Married Edna Pearl Finch (1910-2006) in 1953.
    Robert S. Nihoul died 3 Oct 2005, Jacksonville, Florida.
    source link; http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/18124

The Legends of Spook Hill

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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.

Click to Visit Spook Hill
Better watch out, these Gals can Shout... SPOOKY HILL - See for yourself
SPOOKY oh So Very Spooky. A HILL in Floirda? Nahhhh.... just SPOOKY
Prather's Laundry Capitalized on the Spook Hill Attraction
Pour a glass of OJ, and come with me, ok?
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/

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