This week in West Orange County history

OLD TIMES

85 years ago

One of the ads in the paper makes one wonder what it could be: “Drink 3-Centa. The Taste Thrill of the Century, 3 cents a bottle.”

75 years ago

R.L. Hamilton and J.R. Hightower became the new operators of a new factory established in Oakland in the George Gordon Bond concrete block building formerly occupied by grocery establishments. The firm name was Oakland Battery Co., and it manufactured all kinds of batteries and specialized in automotive equipment.

70 years ago

The new Winter Garden Elementary School — later named Dillard Street Elementary — was planned for the southeast corner of the L.W. Tilden estate at Dillard and Tilden streets, near Lake Apopka. The School Board secured the land for about $17,500. The new building was estimated to cost more than $ 300,000.

55 years ago

A wild boar, weighing almost 300 pounds, was shot and killed near Highway 50 and Dillard Street by Thurman Wofford, owner of West Orange Fence.

50 years ago

The Once-A-Month Supper Club met at the home of Roy and Barbara Fulmer. Members include Lowell and Jackie Teal, Cecil and Elaine Sirmans, and Bob and Myrna DeWeese.

Al Ewing Ford advertised a Ford Pinto for $1,799 at its location on West Highway 50 in Winter Garden.

20 years ago

The town of Oakland selected the architectural firm to design the town square. The project, budgeted for $1.25 million, was to include an addition to the existing Town Hall, a two-story post office, courtyard with a water feature, parking, lighting, pedestrian amenities and landscaping on about 1.3 acres of land. The original layout included plans for a police station.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

March 16, 1951

Residents who enjoyed hearing the crack of the bat during baseball season undoubtedly were excited to read the advertisement in the Winter Garden Times announcing the spring exhibition schedule of the Chattanooga Lookouts, which trained locally during the winter. The players had games scheduled against Birmingham, Jersey City and Washington teams, and West Orange County folks could catch the action for 50 cents.

FROM THE WINTER GARDEN HERITAGE FOUNDATION ARCHIVES

Local artist Dan Crusie painted this scene of a steam train pulling up to the Tavares & Gulf Railroad depot at Joiner and Boyd streets in Winter Garden. Heading west, its next stop might be Brayton and then Tildenville, Oakland, Killarney and beyond. The setting evokes a time when life was lived at a slower pace and citrus groves blanketed the land on all sides of the growing city. Imagine leaving New York City by train on a Saturday afternoon in 1925 from vast, crowded Pennsylvania Station, and eventually arriving at this tiny depot. You’d see crews carting wooden crates packed with citrus fruit and vegetables from the freight room onto trains destined for northern markets, retracing the route you’d taken to visit family in West Orange County.
Prints of this painting are available at the Central Florida Railroad Museum, now open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays.