Dash’s Citrus Grove & House

Dash’s Citrus Grove and House. . Many of the homesites in early Eatonville included a citrus grove. One of the largest was Dash's Citrus Grove. Bounded by Kennedy Boulevard, West, Clark, and Calhoun Streets, it occupied an entire square block The grove was part of the homestead of an itinerant preacher, the Reverend John Dash and his wife. They settled in Eatonville about 1920. Dash's Grove site also illustrates the dual uses of property - commercial and residential. The front porch of the Dash's home functioned as a general store well into the 1940s. Freezes have destroyed nearly all of the mature citrus trees but new trees have germinated from the seeds., "It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement...But there was something happy about the place. The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to door-step, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven. neck down into the ground on a slant. A mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily from their helter-skelter places. The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white.” , , Zora Neale Hurston , “The Gilded Six-Bits”, in The Complete Stories., (Captions) , The Dash’s were early Eatonville Residents., The home of the Reverend and Mrs. John Dash shows a spacious L-shaped porch, which served for many years as a general store.