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Willow is a ghost town in Manatee County, Florida, United States.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2015) |
Willow is a ghost town in Manatee County, Florida, United States.
In 1923 or 1924, a mill was built at Willow by the McGowin-Foshee Lumber Company from Alabama. The company leased 54,000 acres of land for logging. James I. Robbins, Bruce Robbins and James A. Robbins bought it in 1926. The Robbinses also bought 40,000 acres of woodlands that ran south to where State Road 70 is today. The area is believed to have included a sawmill, turpentine still, a planer mill, a dry kiln, Robbins family home, general store (known as the commissary), 75 to 80 worker houses with garden plots, a house of prostitution located on the Little Manatee River, Snowden's filling station, a post office constructed in 1889, a railroad depot with a water tower, and a church, school, and juke joint located in the black section of town. There was a narrow gauge railroad which had 3 engines, a service car and about 30 logging cars equipped with no brakes. At its height, as much as 50,000 board feet a day was cut. There were around 250 workers. They were paid in scrips (small round tokens) that were to be spent in the commissary and were also accepted in the house of prostitution. Willow was separated into white and black sections. The white section was the south end and the black section was the north end. The black children went to the school in Willow and the white children went to school north in the town of Wimauma.
The town failed with the onset of the Great Depression as the price of lumber dropped and the business moved to Tampa in 1937. The business's steam engine from its sawmill is on display at the Robbins Manufacturing Co., located in Tampa on Nebraska Avenue. [1] A railroad single truss bridge crossing the Little Manatee River built in 1913 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company remains, as do bare foundations of some of the old buildings. [1] The railroad bridge needs a significant amount of repair before it can be used again and some of the rails leading to it on the south side have been removed, so that trains can not currently travel across it. On the north side of the railroad bridge, at about Saffold Road, all of the rails have been removed from the rest of this route north to Durant. This abandonment occurred in 1986.
At Willow, there is a railroad spur that leads east off of the mainline to a Florida Power & Light Company plant. CSX Transportation provides current rail service to the plant.
As of 2009 [update] , the Florida Railroad Museum was expanding its facilities in Willow where restoration and repair work is conducted. [2] There is a new railroad depot now at Willow built by the Florida Railroad Museum. The Museum has put a fence around the depot and its maintenance facilities at Willow and has installed security cameras. On weekends, some of the museum’s volunteers who live in other distant towns will stay overnight in Willow in the restored passenger car sleepers on Friday and Saturday nights so they can work at the museum for the entire weekend.
The Seminole Gulf Railway is a short line freight and passenger excursion railroad headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, that operates two former CSX Transportation railroad lines in Southwest Florida. The company's Fort Myers Division, which was previously the southernmost segment of CSX's Fort Myers Subdivision, runs from Arcadia south to North Naples via Punta Gorda, Fort Myers, Estero, and Bonita Springs. The company's other line, the Sarasota Division, runs from Oneco south through Sarasota. Seminole Gulf acquired the lines in November 1987 and operates its own equipment. The company's first train departed Fort Myers on November 14, 1987.
The Florida Railroad Museum is a railroad museum located in Parrish, Florida. The museum operates a heritage railroad and offers round-trip tourist excursions along six miles of the former Seaboard Air Line Sarasota Subdivision in Manatee County between Parrish and Willow.
The Louisville and Nashville Depot is an historic Louisville and Nashville Railroad depot located at 206 Henry Street in Milton, Santa Rosa County, Florida. It was built in 1909 on the site of the former Pensacola and Atlantic depot built in 1882 which burned down in 1907. In 1973, the station was closed, but partially restored with a 1976 Bicentennial grant.
Copeland is an unincorporated community located in eastern Collier County, Florida, United States. It lies at the junction of State Road 29 and Janes Memorial Scenic Drive. Copeland lies along the western border of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and wedged beside the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park to the east. The hamlet of Jerome is a few miles to the north, while Carnestown lies a few miles to the south at the intersection of State Road 29 and U.S. Route 41.
The Champion was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Florida East Coast Railway between New York City and Miami or St. Petersburg, Florida. It operated from 1939 until 1979, continuing under the Seaboard Coast Line and Amtrak. It was a direct competitor to the Seaboard Air Line Railway's Silver Meteor, the first New York-Florida streamliner.
The Minarets and Western Railway was a Class II common carrier that operated in Fresno County, California, from 1921 to 1933. The railway was owned by the Sugar Pine Lumber Company and was built the same year the lumber company was incorporated so that it could haul timber from the forest near Minarets to its sawmill at Pinedale. The southern portion of the line was operated with joint trackage rights with Southern Pacific.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the U.S. state of Florida.
Myakka City is an unincorporated community in southeastern Manatee County, Florida, United States. It lies along State Road 70 near the city of Bradenton, the county seat of Manatee County. Its elevation is 43 feet (13 m), and it is located at 27°20′59″N82°9′41″W. Although Myakka is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 34251; the ZCTA for ZIP code 34251 had a population of 6,351 at the 2010 census. up from 4,239 in 2000.
Gulf Hammock is an unincorporated community in Levy County, Florida, United States. It is near the edge of, and named for, the large wetlands area known as Gulf Hammock. It is located where US 19-98 and County Road 326 cross, near the Wekiva River, approximately 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of Otter Creek.
Ruddock is a ghost town in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, United States. Ruddock was located on an isthmus between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain, 10 miles (16 km) north-northeast of LaPlace.
The Tampa Southern Railroad was a subsidiary of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) originally running from Uceta Yard in Tampa south to Palmetto, Bradenton, and Sarasota with a later extension southeast to Fort Ogden in the Peace River valley built shortly after. It was one of many rail lines completed during the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Most of the remaining trackage now serves as CSX Transportation's Palmetto Subdivision. Another short portion just east of Sarasota also remains that is now operated by Seminole Gulf Railway.
The Palmetto Subdivision is a CSX Transportation rail line in the Tampa Bay region of Florida. It runs from East Tampa and roughly parallels U.S. Route 41 south through Ruskin to Palmetto and Bradenton. The Palmetto Subdivision ends just south of Tropicana Yard in Oneco, where it connects with the Seminole Gulf Railway, a shortline that continues south into Sarasota.
Manning is a ghost town in Angelina County, Texas in East Texas. It is located within the Lufkin, Texas micropolitan area.
The Brooksville 1885 Train Depot is one of three museums operated by the Hernando Historical Museum Association.(1) The museum is located just south of downtown Brooksville, Florida on Russell Street. It was originally built by the Florida Southern Railway. The museum is dedicated to the railroad, and local history of Brooksville, Hernando County, and Florida.
Pemberton Ferry, later renamed Croom, is a ghost town in Central Florida near Brooksville, Florida and Ridge Manor, Florida. A rail line came to Pemberton Ferry in 1884. It was a rail stop by the Withlacoochee River just north of where the I-75 bridge over Croom-Rital Road and Withlacoochee State Trail is today.
Ellaville, Florida is a ghost town in Florida located in the Suwannee River State Park in Suwannee County, Florida, United States. Ellaville was located at the merging place of the Suwannee River and Withlacoochee River.
Mendocino Lumber Company operated a sawmill on Big River near the town of Mendocino, California. The sawmill began operation in 1853 as the Redwood Lumber Manufacturing Company, and changed ownership several times before cutting its final logs in 1938. The sawmill site became part of the Big River Unit of Mendocino Headlands State Park where a few features of the mill and its associated forest railway are still visible along the longest undeveloped estuary in northern California.
Durant is a ghost town in Angelina County, in the U.S. state of Texas. It is located within the Lufkin, Texas micropolitan area.
The Yosemite Lumber Company was an early 20th century Sugar Pine and White Pine logging operation in the Sierra Nevada. The company built the steepest logging incline ever, a 3,100 feet (940 m) route that tied the high-country timber tracts in Yosemite National Park to the low-lying Yosemite Valley Railroad running alongside the Merced River. From there, the logs went by rail to the company’s sawmill at Merced Falls, about fifty-four miles west of El Portal.
The Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Sarasota Subdivision was a rail line that ran from the company's main line at Turkey Creek south to Palmetto, Bradenton, Sarasota, and Venice. The line was built in phases from 1901 to 1911.
Municipalities and communities of Manatee County, Florida, United States | ||
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| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |