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Welcome to the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation!
The mission of the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation is to preserve and celebrate the rich history of West Orange County while fostering innovative cultural experiences. We are dedicated to safeguarding the material culture of our region through engaging educational programs and community collaborations. We aim to connect our community with its past while inspiring future generations to embrace the past, empowering youth to shape a vibrant, culturally rich future.
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ABOUT US
The Winter Garden Heritage Foundation was founded in 1994 to protect the Edgewater Hotel from demolition. The mission to save the Edgewater expanded to preserve and propagate the rich history of Winter Garden and West Orange County. The Foundation did this in an ever-expanding number of ways. WGHF published its first book, All Aboard! A Journey Through Historic Winter Garden, in 1997 and opened the Winter Garden Heritage Museum the following year. The Foundation began the Garden Theatre Restoration Project in 2003 and over the next five years worked tirelessly to bring about the performing arts theatre you see today. In 2015, a capital campaign culminated with the dedication of the building you now sit in, a state-of-the-art facility that houses the offices and 20,000-piece collection of the Foundation alongside a modern venue.
Between all these keystone projects, the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation’s dedicated staff and volunteers worked to fulfill the Foundation’s mission every day by operating our free museums (Central Florida Railroad Museum & Winter Garden Heritage Museum), by facilitating research in our publicly accessible archives, and by organizing our free programs, all of which benefit our community in a crucial way. They bring the community together through our shared, unique history.
