Exploring (Ethel) Florida Ghost Town

Описание: Hiking at Rock Springs Run Reserve State Park near the Wekiva River in central Florida. It’s a pristine and vast wilderness with an array of recreational activities. Hiking, camping, horseback riding, bike riding and hunting are just some of the things you can enjoy here. It’s a great place to take in nature and see wildlife as well. Along with some really neat history to learn about and discover. I like to explore around the woods and off the beaten path where I came across parts of the old townsite known as Ethel that existed in this area for a short period of time in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Ethel peaked in the late 1800s and early 1900s with a population of about 200, and the the local economy was helped by sawmills and turpentine production. The school doubled as a church. Ethel was once a railroad stop as well. The cemetery is one of the remaining sites from the town. There are many people buried here but only a few tombstones remain today. The former land surveyor found the exact borders of the cemetery and welded together a new archway to mark its entrance. Ethel was first established in the 1860s by people who obtained their land through homestead acts, also known as patents or grants. The source of its name is and may never be known, but believed to be from the Sanford-Lake Eustis Railway, built in 1886 - 1887 for passenger and freight service. Because of the railroad, there was also a railroad platform stop that was located in this small community. The railway eventually became part of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad System and was used through the 1960s. The community grew up around a commissary, or general store, that had belonged to a timber company and burned down prior to 1916. The houses located in Ethel were scattered with a distance between them. There was also a post office and a schoolhouse where church services were held every other Sunday by a minister who crossed the Wekiva River by ferry. Ethel was a rural community and not a developed town as we would think of one. Most of Ethel's people were farmers, but census records show carpenters, machinists, wood craftsman, a photographer, ferry operators and school teachers made up the people in this community. A major freeze in 1895 destroyed the citrus trees and caused most of the residents to abandon their furnished homes and livestock, taking with them just their clothing and a few personal items. Those who remained gathered the abandoned livestock and became farmers. By the 1920 Census of Ethel, there were only ten homes with families listed and that included the residents of the little adjacent town of Wekiva. All that's left of the small community of Ethel is the Ethel Cemetery which was established around 1880.
Ethel Cemetery is a one-acre site containing only three tombstones, but research has identified a total of twenty-nine burials so far. There is a lot we do not know about the small town of Ethel that once stood where Rock Springs Run State Reserve is today, fortunately, we get a slice of history with the Ethel cemetery that still remains.

You can visit the links posted for more information and history. It’s inspiring to see these places still in nature. The area is protected at the preserve and as always I left all history undisturbed. *It is prohibited and illegal to metal detect, dig or remove artifacts from public State lands. Please be respectful of the nature and history that still remains here.

Thank you for watching and enjoy the adventures! All the best and I’ll see you in the wilderness.

History of Ethel: https://www.floridastateparks.org/lea...

Rock Springs Run Reserve State Park: https://www.floridastateparks.org/par...

This video is dedicated to Tony Moore: Much of what we know today is thanks to the work of Tony Moore, a retired land surveyor and a volunteer with the Wekiva Wilderness Trust, the nonprofit group that supports the work of the Wekiva River Basin State Parks. Read about it here along with more history:
https://wwt-cso.com/resources/Documen...

More history of Ethel: http://elhs.synthasite.com/ethel.php

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