The Village Depot

The Village Depot. . Prior to the late 1880s, travel was completed primarily by foot, horse, or wagon. After the expansion of railroad lines through Florida, convenient transportation became affordable to more of the population. Travel time was still slow, but railroads improved access to larger towns while spurring growth near the stations. New residents, such as the Cadman family, transported their furniture via rail and could ride back to the city to attend the opera or a special social event. The railways were also a popular way for tourists to travel or take an excursion from their hotel in Runnymede or Narcoossee to spend the day near Lake Tohopekaliga. , , We arrived here (by train in 1886) on the 7th day of January which was as warm as a summer day to us. I say this as the ground was frozen when we left Americus. Got to come South, and of course we thought we had found the land of paradise and sunshine… As for myself, I had been married about three years when we came to Kissimmee to live. It was a hard struggle for us to get along at first, and my husband worked at many things to make a go of it. I learned to sew, and took in sewing to help out. But it paid off, I think, as my husband finally got a job on the railroad on June 1, 1892, and worked himself up to an engineer. He worked at that until he was retired, which was on December 1, 1926. , Mrs. Margaret Outlaw Bass , , Station Stops , When the Sugar Belt Railway began service, passengers could travel to Kissimmee, switch trains, board Henry Plant's South Florida Railroad, and then travel all the way to large cities like Tampa or head east to Sanford. Many of Osceola County's small towns were once station stops, and trains took people to where the jobs were - to mills, logging towns, or turpentine camps. In the late 1800s, many small railroad lines or spurs were laid across the county and the state, but most no longer exist. When the tracks were removed, some lines were replaced with roads, while others were abandoned. , , A Sweet Ride , The Sugar Belt Railway was a small train spur from Kissimmee to Narcoossee via Hamilton Disston's St. Cloud Sugar Mill. Built as a way to ship sugar products from the mill to the main railroad line in Kissimmee, this railway began allowing passengers to board in 1889. The railway continued to bring tourists to the area east and north of the Tohopekaliga lakes, even after Disston's Sugar Mill ceased operations. Initially, the rail line was taken over by the South Florida Railroad, and then in 1902, it was bought out by the Atlantic Coast Railroad. , , (captions ) , Ladies at Narcoossee Depot circa 1903 , Women could travel unescorted to Kissimmee for a day of shopping, The larger shops and general stores carried the latest in fashion, as well as items such as corets and shoes. , Courtesy Jamie Vans/Agnew Family Archives , , Narcoossee Depot, 1902 , At the end of the line, such as the depot in Narcoossee, locomotives were turned on a roundtable to make the return trip in the opposite direction. There are still remnants of the turntable visible at the original site in Narcoossee. , Image courtesy of the Orange County Regional History Center , , Engine 645 ACL circa 1905 , The conductor and the engineer, Ira Bass (with raised arm), pose with their locomotive. Early in his career, Ira helped survey the lines of the Sugar Belt Railway. He also worked on several other rail lines in different jobs before returning to the Narcoossee branch in 1904 as the engineer. , Courtesy Osceola County Historical Society