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A Brief History of Orlando and Central Florida

Chances are that you are wondering exactly what kind of history Orlando has other than theme parks. Well, Orlando’s settled history is not much more than 150 years old, but a lot has happened in that century and a half. In the early years (1840-1880), Orlando and Central Florida could have been called "The Wild South." Cattle raising was the primary way to make a living and the towns in Central Florida looked more like Laredo and Dodge City than towns in Georgia or the Carolinas. There were Indian wars (the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Seminole Wars), cattle rustling, gun fights, gambling and other evening pursuits. It was as a cow town that Orlando got its start and it was not until 1880 that Orlando would evolve beyond its cow town stage.

In 1880 The South Florida Railroad extended its line down into Orlando from Sanford and the rest of the nation. With the coming of the railroad, Central Florida’s fledgling Citrus Industry would rapidly expand with easy access to Northern markets. With the Citrus industry, Orlando changed dramatically. It gladly took on its roll of county seat and became the hub for commerce and business in Central Florida. By the mid-1920s Orlando was a bustling city with a population over 10,000. The Florida land boom during the Roaring Twenties radically changed the look of downtown and with the advent of affordable automobiles; for the first time tourism became a major Central Florida industry.

Orlando weathered the Depression - mostly because of its agricultural base - and went through another major transformation during World War II. In 1940, the Army Air Corps set up a training field at the Orlando Municipal Airport located just east of downtown. In 1941 the Army established a second air base south of the town of Pine Castle. Over ten thousand men and women were trained during the war and afterwards. The second air base eventually became Pinecastle Air Force Base (later still: McCoy A. F. B.) and was used as a Strategic Air Command unit with B-52s that carried atomic bombs. From 1968 to 1998 Orlando was also the home to one of the Navy’s three Naval Training Centers.

With the relocation to Orlando of the Glenn L. Martin Company in 1956, Orlando started to develop a technological economy. The Martin Company, which later became Martin Marietta and is today the space and defense giant Lockheed Martin, built missiles in Orlando including the Pershing and Patriot Missiles. By 1960, the population of Orlando was over 60,000. Beyond its own population, Orlando was in the process of becoming the center of a metropolitan area that included Orange, Seminole and Osceola Counties.

And then Disney came. By 1998, Walt Disney World announced the attendance of its 600,000,000th guest. Today, Orlando welcomes more visitors each year than the population of California - over 43.3 million (2000 statistics), which makes Orlando the number one tourist destination in the world. Most of them stay in one of 100,000 hotel rooms and visit 7 major theme parks. The current population of Orlando is approximately 185,000 and the Metro-Orlando population is over 1,500,000. Orlando continues to be one of the fastest growing communities in Florida as well as the United States. Not bad for a mosquito-ridden cowtown.

Church Street looking west, 1875. 5 years before the arrival of the South Florida Railroad. On July 21, 1875, 22 men cast ballots to incorporate Orlando as a city. At the time the town had 85 residents and had a size of 2 square miles.