1885 Train Depot
The 1885 Train Depot Historic Marker was dedicated by the Historic Hernando Preservation Society and Hernando Heritage Museum on November 5, 2022. The marker is located at the historic train depot location at 70 Russell Street, Brooksville. The depot is now a historic museum.
Marker Text Side 1: In 1885, Brooksville had a population of 500. Residents depended on horse-drawn wagons and stagecoaches to transport goods and passengers to the outside world. Four innovative businessmen formed the Brooksville Railroad Association and paid the Florida Southern Railway Company $20,000 to bring the railroad to Brooksville. The 120x21-foot train depot, made from local cypress, cedar, and yellow pine, included a 40-foot covered back dock and a telegraph office. At first, one railroad track reached Brooksville. The tracks grew to occupy both sides of the building. In 1892, the Henry Plant Railroad System acquired the Florida Southern Railway. Over the years, various railroads owned the depot until use faded away. By 1971, all tracks were gone, and the last owner, CSX, closed the building. The empty depot deteriorated for over twenty years. Homeless people used the back dock as a sleeping platform. In 1986, the Hernando County Historical Museum Association bought the land for $12,600. CSX donated the 101-year-old building for use as a museum. Restoration was completed by volunteers, community organizations, and grants. After years of hard work, the 1885 Train Depot Museum opened for the public to enjoy in 1992.
Marker Text Side 2: The arrival of the railroad to the isolated town of Brooksville changed everything. Racially segregated during the Jim Crow era, the depot became a hub of activity for blacks and whites alike. Farmers, businesses, and residents relied on the railroad. The market for local products such as lumber, turpentine, citrus, phosphate, even livestock expanded, resulting in more wealth for the community. Merchandise like ready-made clothing, chinaware, furniture, medicines, books, and magazines reached the town. People mimicked the fashions they saw in the magazines. Books aided in the education of children. Mail arrived in a matter of days, not weeks. The railroad created good jobs. A need for hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants developed. Women and children could travel unescorted on the train to visit family. A trip to the Withlacoochee River to swim and picnic became a popular day excursion for locals. They rode “The Brooksville Short,” the train running 10 miles between Brooksville and the town of Croom, near the river. By 1933, automobiles took the place of passenger train service. Freight hauling continued until the late 1960s, when the tracks were removed. The 1885 Train Depot endures as a historical museum.
Brooksville Train Depot
Garden Grove Marker
On Saturday, September 7, 2019, the Historic Hernando Preservation Society dedicated Hernando County’s newest historic marker commemorating the planned community of Garden Grove. Made possible by HHPS Board member Roger Sherman, the marker is located on the east side of US 41/ Broad Street, just north of the Spring Hill Drive intersection.
Marker Side 1 reads:
Garden Grove was carved out of the Chocochatti Hammock, first inhabited by the Upper Creek Nation and then by pioneer families such as the Hopes and Crums. The area remained largely undeveloped up to the 1920s. By that time, the Florida Land Boom, which started in West Palm Beach and Miami, had spread to the west coast of Florida. Many real estate companies were created and bought large tracts of land with the intention of luring new residents and businesses, along with investors interested in land speculation. Developments such as Hickory Hill, Russell- Hale Heights, Mundon Hill Farms, Dixie Acres, Nobleton, Mountain Park, and Masaryktown sprang up from 1924 through 1926 in Hernando County. One such enterprise was Garden Grove, platted in 1924 and surveyed by G.D. and H.D. Mendenhall, Civil Engineers. Garden Grove originally contained some 13,000 acres with plans for over 1,600 residential, commercial, and small farm lots. It was bounded by the Tampa Northern Railroad on the east and bisected by a portion of the first state road, No. 5 (later US 41) on the west. Plans included a city square and lakeside park, as well as a grand main street called Station Boulevard leading to the train depot.
Marker Side 2 reads:
Advertisements in newspapers promised a holiday atmosphere and described an idyllic environment. A mobile and newly affluent middle class with leisure time sought to speculate and turn investments into quick profits, often quadrupling them within a year. As a large influx of new residents was expected, the county built roads to Garden Grove from Spring Lake and Aripeka. A bus route from Tampa to Garden Grove began along with passenger train service. By 1926, some of the planned roads were laid out and a number of homes constructed. The Methodist-Episcopal Church South became the first house of worship. A one-room school was built, and operated until 1948. Such speculation, however, was unsustainable and the real estate bubble burst in the mid-1920s, just as Garden Grove was beginning to grow. The company sold back some properties to their original owners for pennies on the dollar. The Garden Grove corporation became inactive in 1936. It was not until the 1950s that development in the area resumed with new home and road construction, along with the donation of land by the Crum family for the Garden Grove Baptist Church.
Town of Centralia Marker
The Town of Centralia historic marker was dedicated on September 23, 2017 by the Historic Hernando Preservation Society. The marker commemorates the location of the historic town of Centralia, a short-lived but large-scale logging and sawmill community. The marker was made possible in large part to a donation by archeologist and HHPS board member William Rosst.
Location: Southwest of Commercial Way (US-19) at Centralia Road, Weeki Wachee, FL
Marker Side 1 reads:
This site was once the location of one of Florida’s largest lumber mills. As demand for insect and rot resistant cypress increased, the J.C. Turner Lumber Company began the logging of over 15,000 acres of Red Tidewater Cypress, cedar, and pine in coastal Hernando County. The Turner Company financed the construction of the mill in 1910. It was known locally as the Tidewater Cypress Mill. Eighteen miles of narrow-gauge tram lines were laid through the swamp to connect the mill and logging areas to the Tampa Northern Railroad. Laborers used steam-powered skidders to transport cut logs onto railroad cars. The logs were then dumped in a pond near the sawmills. The large double-banded saws, powered by electricity generated from four steam boilers, could cut 100,000 board feet each day. The finished wood was stacked in a 160-acre drying yard for up to four years. The dried wood was sent to the planing mill to become roof shingles, lath, and construction lumber. The finished lumber was sold locally, or transported sixteen miles by rail to Brooksville, where it continued to the port in Tampa and was loaded onto ships headed to the company’s wholesale distribution yard on the Hudson River in New York.
Marker Side 2 reads:
Located a few miles north of Weeki Wachee, the “boom town” of Centralia sprang up to support the 1,200 mill workers and their families. The wealth of timber seemed inexhaustible, luring men and industry from all corners of the earth. A post office opened in 1910 followed by other businesses, including a general store, drugstore, Mrs. Varn’s Centralia Hotel, the Hungry None Restaurant, and a Greek bakery. The general store, run by George Gamble, boasted more stock than any store in larger towns like Jacksonville or Tampa. Centralia offered other amenities such as a resident doctor and dentist, schoolhouse, and community church offering Catholic and Protestant services. There were no saloons, however, as the mill’s general manager, Edgar A. Roberts, forbade drinking. Soda pop was the drink of choice. The trees were exhausted by 1917, and the mill shut down soon after. The town struggled along for a few more years but was mostly abandoned by the 1920s. Only the foundations of this once mighty mill remain. The Turner company reseeded the land with slash pines in the 1960s. Purchased in 1985 by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the land became part of the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge.
Chocochatti Historic Marker
The Chocochatti Historic Marker was dedicated by the Historic Hernando Preservation Society on May 30, 2014, with representatives of the Seminole Tribe of Florida attending. The marker commemorates the location of Chocochatti, an early Seminole village in Florida.
The marker text reads: The first colony of Muskogee-speaking Upper Creek Indians from Alabama was established nearby in 1767. British surveyor/naturalist Bernard Romans identified the settlement as “New Yufala, planted in a beautiful and fertile plain.” It later became known as Tcuko tcati, or “Chocochatti,” meaning “Red House” of “Red Town.” It was here that the Upper Creek Indians were transformed into Florida Seminoles. The Chocochatti Seminoles were prosperous commercial deer hunters, traders, farmers, and cattlemen. Chocochatti town and prairie was their home for nearly 70 years. The Brooksville region, historically known as the Big Hammock, processed rich soils for their crops, an abundance of game, and prairies ideal for grazing cattle. Turbulent times came with war in the early 1800s, culminating with the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. By 1836, the Chocochatti Seminoles, under the leadership of Fuche Luste Hadjo. “Black Dirt,” chose to emigrate to present-day Oklahoma, at the outbreak of the Second Seminole War. Others chose to resist, eventually being forced into South Florida, where they prosper today as an unconquered people, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, whose character speaks volumes to humankind.
Chocochatti Historic Marker
Other Hernando County Markers
Hernando County
Hernando County
Hernando County
Location: U.S. 41/Main Street at Courthouse in Brooksville.
County: Hernando
City: Brooksville
Description: Hernando County originally embraced Hernando, Pasco, and Citrus counties. It was created by the Territorial Legislature in 1843 and named for Hernando DeSoto. In 1844, its name was changed to Benton County in honor of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, but his moderation during the Missouri Compromise caused extremists in the legislature to change the name back to Hernando. DeSoto, now Brooksville, was the first county seat. The present boundaries of the county were set in 1887.
Masaryktown
Hernando County
Hernando County
Location:398 Broad Street
County: Hernando
City: Masaryktown
Description: In 1924-26, a group of Slovak and czech immigrants moved down from New York and Pennsylvania to establish a farming community in Florida, and bought about 10,000 acres in Hernando County. They founded a town here, which they named after Thomas G Masaryk (1850-1937), “founding father” and first president of the independent republic of Czechoslovakia, formed in 1918 with the help of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. They named the town’s streets for American presidents and for Slovak and Czech patriots and writers who contributed to the independence movement. Initial attempts at growing citrus and vegetables failed, but eventually a thriving egg poultry farming community developed. Slovak cultural traditions were maintained for more than one half century. The building on this sit was erected in 1925 as the “Masaryk Hotel” for initial housing of newly arrived settlers, and retained that name until 1997.
Sponsors: Masaryktown Board of Directors and the Florida Department of State
Fort King Road
Hernando County
Fort King Road
Location: along S.R. 50.
County: Hernando
City: Ridge Manor
Description: Shortly after Florida became a U.S. Territory, Fort Brooke was constructed at the mouth of the Hillsborough River and Fort King was established near the present site of Ocala. In 1825, work was begun by the federal government on an overland route connecting those fortifications. This “Military Road” was improved and soon was known as the “Fort King Road.” It was an important transportation and communication link during the Second Seminole War (1835-42), a conflict over the removal of Indians from Florida. This route remained a vital mail and wagon road during the 19th century development of central Florida. Presently, U.S. Highway 301 crosses the course of one of the oldest major roads in Florida, the Fort King Road.
Sponsors: Sponsored by Hernando County historical commission in cooperation with Department of State
Chinsegut Hill
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Fort King Road
Location:22495 Chinsegut Hill Road, Brooksville
Description: In 1842, South Carolinian Bird M. Pearson staked a claim on 5,000 acres and called it Tiger Tail Hill, one of the few surviving plantations in Florida and the one of the oldest houses in Hernando County. Pearson built the manor house’s east wing in 1847 and later residents expanded it, beginning in 1852. He raised citrus, cattle, and sugarcane. In 1904 Chicago residents Raymond (1873-1954) and Margaret Drier (1868-1945) Robins purchased the property and named it Chinsegut Hill, an Inuit word meaning a place where lost things are found. The estate served as a retreat from the couple’s tireless activism on behalf of workers, women, and the poor. Guests entertained here included Thomas Edison, Senator and Mrs. Claude Pepper, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, J.C. Penney and Helen Keller. During the Great Depression, the Robinses suffered severe losses and donated Chinsegut to the federal government, collaborating with the Department of Agriculture on an experimental station to benefit Florida farmers. In return, the couple could live there until their deaths. New Deal workers improved the property and built two cabins in 1933. In 1958, the University of South Florida acquired the property for use as a conference center.
Sponsors: THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA AND THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Grave of Charlotte Wynn Pyles Crum
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Location: Spece 2, tier 3, lot 18, Brooksville Cemetery
City: Brooksville
Description: One of the area’s early white settlers, Charlotte Crum is the first known burial in the Brooksville Cemetery. Her death occurred immediately following the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), and is symbolic of the epic collision that occurred in Florida as diverse cultures struggled for control of the expanding American frontier. Born 1792 near Savannah, Georgia, Charlotte married Col. Samuel Robert Pyles who in 1824 moved his family to what later became Alachua County, Florida. Following Pyles’s 1837 death, Charlotte married Richard R. Crum who secured this portion of land through the Armed Occupation Act of 1842, settling at Chuccochattie, less than one mile south. While traveling nearby September 12, 1842, Charlotte, her daughter Rebecca Harn, granddaughter Mary Catherine Harn and escort John Francis McDonnell were fired upon by a party of Seminoles who were unaware of the war’s end and evidently retaliating for recent aggressive acts by white settlers eager to remove the area’s native population. In the ensuing struggle, all escaped but Charlotte, who was killed and whose death received sensationalized attention. She is buried here, less than one-eighth mile from her home in a grave once entombed with brick.
Sponsors: THE HERNANDO HISTORICAL MUSEUM ASSOCIATION, INC. AND THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Richloam General Store and Post Office
Location: 38219 Richloam Clay Sink Road
Description: In 1921, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) decided to relocate its depot in Riverland to Richloam. Soon after, in 1922, Postmaster Lucius Sidney “Sid” Brinson moved the Riverland Post Office to the growing community of Richloam and opened a general store. The 1920s were a chaotic time in Richloam. In 1926, Pasco County Deputy Sheriff William O’Berry was shot and killed east of the store while attempting to arrest Charles Davis, a worker at the local turpentine still, over the theft of a dog. In January 1928, the store was robbed and burnt, likely from arson, but was rebuilt soon after in February of that same year. The store and post office continued to operate until the late 1930s, when the Great Depression forced the ACL to close the depot. In 1936, Brinson closed the store and post office and relocated to Sarasota. He rented the building as a residence to the Mills family until the 1950s. After sitting vacant until 1973, Brinson’s nephew, John Brinson, acquired the property. John Brinson’s son, Eric Burkes, renovated the general store and reopened it in 2016. This general store was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017, and is the only remaining building from the Richloam community.
Richloam
Brooksville Army Airfield Gunnery Backstop
Brooksville Army Airfield Gunnery Backstop
Address: 38294 Richloam Clay Sink Road
Description: This is the site of the former Schroder Land and Timber Company (SLTC) clubhouse. John Schroder, owner of the SLTC, purchased large tracts of land in Hernando and Pasco counties, including the area later known as Richloam. Built around 1916, the clubhouse served as both the company headquarters and the home of its foreman, Lucius Sidney “Sid” Brinson. While SLTC used much of its land for logging and turpentine production, other parts were sold to prospective farmers. The company brought buyers to the area on a train, nicknamed “The Goat,” and the clubhouse included a demonstration farm to showcase local crops. In 1926, SLTC sold the clubhouse and most of its land in the area to the Richloam Land Company (RLC). Hoping to take advantage of the Florida Land Boom, RLC continued to sell lots to new farmers, but had limited success. In 1936, as part of the U.S. Land Resettlement Program, the federal government acquired the land in Richloam from the SLTC, RLC, and other private owners. Some land owners resisted resettlement. The Works Progress Administration began replanting previously clear cut pine trees. In 1954, the State of Florida purchased the Richloam land and incorporated it into the Withlacoochee State Forest.
Brooksville Army Airfield Gunnery Backstop
Brooksville Army Airfield Gunnery Backstop
Brooksville Army Airfield Gunnery Backstop
Location: Aviation Loop Drive, Brooksville
Side One: At the beginning of World War II, a group of Hernando County leaders met with U.S. Senator Claude Pepper and expressed a desire to have a military airfield built in the county. In November 1942, the Brooksville Army Airfield consisting of 2,230 acres opened as the Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics (AAFSAT). Young men from the 1st, 5th, 99th, and 340th Bombardment Squadrons trained to drop bombs on the enemy. The sky above Brooksville filled with bombers – B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell, and B-26 Marauder. Only a concrete backstop or bunker approximately 25 feet by 100 feet remains from the World War II airfield. The gunnery backstop containing targets, railroad ties, and some sand served both to align the fifty caliber machine guns mounted on the bombers and as a site for target practice. The trainees fired the guns from bombers chained to the ground a hundred yards away. This system was called a Boresight Range. The holes made by the bullets can still be seen in the steel support beam along the top of the concrete. At the end of the war, in 1945, the United States government donated the airfield to Brooksville.
Side Two: In 1940, the population of the little town of Brooksville hovered around 5,000. After the Brooksville Army Airfield opened in 1942, young men in uniform doubled that population. The flyboys filled the void created by local men leaving to fight in the war far from Brooksville. The military presence transformed a slow-paced agricultural community into a social epicenter. The airfield became a new source of employment for the locals and expanded the customer base for businesses. Young daredevil pilots controlled the best machines in the air. One day planes from the Zephyrhills airfield buzzed downtown Brooksville. Pilots from Brooksville bombed the Zephyrhills airfield with sacks of flour in retaliation. After the war, the beautiful Florida weather enticed many of the Army fliers to come back. They married Brooksville ladies, and settled in the town. The end of the war meant the end of the Brooksville Army Airfield and the birth of the Brooksville Municipal Airport in 1947. In 1961, it became the Hernando County Airport. In March 2013, the name changed to Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport and Technology Center.