Then the Old Winter Garden Started Disappearing
For decades, Winter Garden had two enormous economic advantages.
Lake Apopka and citrus.
Then both got hammered.
Pollution devastated Lake Apopka and destroyed the fishing economy that had once attracted visitors from around the country.
Meanwhile, Central Florida’s citrus industry faced its own problems.
A series of devastating freezes during the 1980s severely damaged citrus production across Central Florida. Growers increasingly shifted production farther south, where catastrophic freezes were less likely.
NASA’s Earth Observatory has documented the impact of severe Florida freezes on citrus-growing regions, while Winter Garden’s own historical records describe citrus’s enormous importance to the local economy.
Then there was another problem.
Cars had changed how Central Florida worked.
New highways allowed people to bypass traditional downtowns. Shopping and development increasingly followed newer roads and suburban commercial centers.
Winter Garden’s historic downtown wasn’t where the action was anymore.
By the late twentieth century, the little agricultural city that had grown around railroad tracks, oranges and bass fishing was struggling.
The railroad wasn’t the economic lifeline it once had been.
The lake wasn’t bringing fishermen.
Citrus acreage was disappearing.
Businesses had moved away from downtown.
This is the part that’s easy to miss when you’re walking down modern Plant Street on a busy Saturday morning.
Winter Garden’s comeback wasn’t inevitable.
Old buildings could have been demolished.
The historic commercial district could have become another forgotten collection of storefronts bypassed by suburban development.
In fact, one of downtown’s most recognizable historic buildings nearly didn’t survive.
Plans emerged to demolish the Edgewater Hotel.
Instead, people decided old Winter Garden might actually be worth saving.
And that’s when the city’s second life really began.
