Arrival! My First Driving Tours of West Orange County- Part One

Jim Crescitelli
Sep 7
4 min read

After a friend read my recent watery post, https://www.wghf.org/post/fish-story, I was asked to elaborate on my "discovery" of West Orange County after arriving here in July of 1978.

Here's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

After a few years, and a steady job, and a car (my first- a used, beige 1975 Plymouth Volare), I set out with my driving atlas to explore my new world in detail. The map above is from that guidebook, annotated by me at stopping points along the way. That atlas was also printed in 1976, and you can see that it serves as a "Rosetta Stone" of all that was undeveloped in the region.

I didn't take a lot of notes, but I did take a lot of pictures through these early 80s and 90s driving tours. Technology has improved, of course, so most of these shots made with an inexpensive rangefinder camera aren't as sharp as they would be if taken today with a phone; but I'm glad I had the rare presence of mind to document my travels. I'll let them tell my tale...

Coming in from the east, wandering quiet streets and virtually empty, two-lane highways, I snapped a photo of what I later found out was the Freewill Baptist Church on Clarcona-Ocoee Road near Adair Street. I'd never seen a church like this before outside of Alabama; surely I was now officially "in the country."

In those days, Clarcona-Ocoee Road ended west at a copse of trees, and veered sharply left for a few streets, then right, then left again. Known today as North Lakewood Avenue, the road passed through a very old, wooded neighborhood with numbered byways along the right; some maps refer to this area as North Ocoee. After a jog to the right across the railroad tracks running along Flewelling Avenue (there were buffalo in a field), the road turned left and became Bluford Avenue- named for Ocoee steamboat entrepreneur and captain Bluford Sims. Central Ocoee was home to weathered wooden houses, service stations, various small businesses, and citrus packinghouses. (There are phtos in my collection yet to be unearthed!)

I followed Bluford south to Old Winter Garden Road and then made a left onto Windermere Road. (Still with me?) After a bit I was in a place called Gotha.

The church at Gotha, which has served various faith congregations over the decades. It still stands.

The general store in Gotha, now beautifully refashioned as Yellow Dog Eats.

(For a concise, fascinating history of the German colony of Gotha, ask us about author Kathleen Klare's book, available at our Winter Garden Heritage Foundation gift shop.)

In those relatively traffic-free days, I was able to easily drive all through West Orange County. Another place I visited is known as Beulah. Older than Winter Garden, the older section of it rests peacefully past the high school, and features a cemetery containing many of the region's settler families- including Arthur Bullard Newton, elected Winter Garden's first mayor in 1908 when the town was incorporated.

Beulah Baptist Church, one of the oldest congregations in West Orange County.

I could tell by the atlas that nothing lay further south besides thousands of acres of orange groves and Disney, and so I turned back north to Ocoee and then west toward Winter Garden along Franklin-Plant Streets (438). There was no 429 then, and soon a large home on the right caught my camera's eye. It looked like a bank, but when I first saw it, Share-A-Home was managing it as a group home.

Built by citrus and vegetable grower Morgan C. Britt in 1929...

...and here's the venerable grande dame before Mrs. Britt ordered the columns arranged fully across the facade! The solarium to the right was also redone, perhaps in later years. — ...and here's the venerable *grande dame* before Mrs. Britt ordered the columns arranged fully across the facade! The solarium to the right was also redone, perhaps in later years.

I drove further west toward Winter Garden- I dimly recall a large, old packinghouse, some nondescript industrial buildings on both sides of the road, and then I reached the intersection of Dillard and Plant Streets. On my right, looming large, was First Baptist Church. Nothing really caught my eye at the time to draw me further west- that happened some years later- so I turned left and went to State Highway 50. I meandered back and forth along this quiet, practically car-free road that stretched to a hilly horizon. I drove past citrus groves, stands of ancient oak trees, wooden houses that looked almost like cabins, and this very tall young lady:

She stood in front of Griffith Tire. Here's a link to her story: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/56199

Tooling along the roads that coursed through all those orange groves, I encountered a lonely dirt lane leading to the southern shore of John's Lake. I parked the car and walked (trespassed?) a bit, surrounded on all sides by orange groves stretching north. This particular day was overcast, and the air was so still... there wasn't a sound to be heard and all I could feel was a sensation of being in the presence of something very unique and important. Nothing in my life before had prepared me for this gorgeous, lush proof of the reason why West Orange County had come to be.

Little did I know that this silent, brooding landscape wasn't going to last forever.