Winter Garden, FL: Heritage Museum

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Winter Garden, FL, has preserved both of their depots. The Tavares & Gulf depot is now their railroad museum. And the 1918 Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) depot is now a more general history museum --- Winter Garden Heritage Museum. I learned about the Heritage Museum when I toured the railroad museum.

It should be of no surprise that there is a big exhibit concerning the growing and processing of oranges. But the topic that caught my eye was the tractors. The outside displays consisted of a Chessie System caboose, an old fire truck, a Fordson tractor, and a Fordson tractor built for use in an orchard.

Note the seat for the orchard version is further back so that it can be lower. And then a lot of shielding is added to keep the branches off the tractor. Inside they featured the Case logo.

Digitally zoomed in on the picture to the left

I was surprised to learn that the dealer, Hoyle Pounds, started out as a Ford dealer, both cars and tractors. He not only sold equipment, he helped improve it. The museum staffer, when I mentioned the Case display, explained that the owner of the dealership had invented rubber tires for tractors. The following explains that he refined farm implements as well as the tractor.

By 1926 Pounds moved to Winter Garden, established a business where he sold model-T Ford cars downstairs and repaired tractors upstairs. In 1928, Pounds developed and patented the first rubber tractor tires, earning his economic success and the nickname "Mr. Tractor." His innovation was important as roads were being built and tractors with the old metal wheels were outlawed because of the damage they could cause the roads. Rubber tires turned a harsh riding steel-wheeled tractor into a road friendly, smooth riding machine that pulled and traveled well both in and out of the field. Pounds cornered the market on rubber tractor tires until 1933. Several studies of the time showed that as much as a third less fuel and a fourth more work with low pressure rubber tires resulted when compared to steel lugs. He also added an extra gear to his tractors, which speeded them up from six mph to over 30 mph.

Pounds had a long career as an innovator. For decades Pounds was instrumental in designing and building fertilizer attachments, hedgers, sprayers, grove tractors, dusters and many other pieces of specialized grove equipment. Pounds also designed a lawn mower deck for his good friend and fishing buddy, Neil Smith, who was the creator of the Snapper lawn mowers. Although Smith initially kept the idea a secret, when the project was completed, the two men had made the first Snappin' Turtle lawn mower decks. When Smith completed building his lawn mowers, Pounds began to sell them at Pounds Motor Company. In 1959, he received a patent for a combined tree cultivator and fertilizer distributive. In 1980, in honor of his many contributions to the growing process, Pounds was inducted into Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame. (HallOfFame)

Heritage Museum

I'm embarrassed that I missed the display of the typewriter and adding machine. I had been looking for a typewriter so that I could take a picture of one for an article about the invention of the term "keyboarding" to replace the term "typing."

The ACL railroad was built by the Orange Belt Railway in 1886. Because of three devastating freezes during the 1980s, most of the farmers sold their land and replanted on cheaper and warmer land to the south. The railroad lost its primary shippers and was abandoned. Fortunately, the right-of-way was refurbished as a trail in 1994 and renovated as a streetscape in 2003. (wghf)

These photos were taken from the same spot looking in opposite directions down the street.

This graph shows the dramatic plunge of citrus acreage in the 1980s.