Florida railroad history and Florida land history often go hand-in-hand. That’s certainly the case when it comes to Florida’s first steam-powered railroad, the Lake Wimico & St. Joseph Railroad in the panhandle near the Gulf of Mexico. “On Sept. 5, 1836, the Lake Wimico & St. Joseph Railroad ran its first train from the Apalachicola…

Many Floridians were cut off from the rest of the country following the Civil War. “Florida had few roads and needed to build more railroads,” states “Growth of Florida Railroads,” a website of the University of South Florida’s Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT). “Unfortunately, the state was in debt from the Civil War and…

New Smyrna Beach on Florida’s northeast coast today draws tourists and water sports enthusiasts to the Atlantic Ocean south of the more populous and hectic Daytona Beach area. The paradoxically named city got its start as a British agricultural colony approximately two-and-a-half centuries ago. Soon after taking control of Florida from Spain in 1863, the…

Much of the sand in the Sunshine State’s major geographic regions originated elsewhere. The Appalachian Mountains extend from Alabama to New York; no part of the range is in Florida. But much of the Appalachian’s sediment is in the Sunshine State, according to the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF-IFAS) website,…