Business & Economics

Prolific inventor Thomas Edison and automobile pioneer Henry Ford shaped the modern world like few others in history.

The lives of these close friends intersected at their winter homes in southwest Florida. Edison first visited the tiny cattle-ranching community of Fort Myers in 1885, building a home and laboratory soon after. There, he wintered with his wife, Mina, and their children, Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore. Ford purchased the adjacent estate in 1916, wintering in the area with his wife, Clara, and son, Edsel. Here in southwest Florida, these famous neighbors relaxed and found time to explore new projects.

For more than 50 years, there was no more iconic Florida tourist attraction than Silver Springs.

Its sheer popularity meant that the surrounding area—indeed, the entirety of Marion County—serviced the entertainment, gas, food, and lodging needs of millions of tourists annually. Visitors flocked to places like Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute, Tommy Bartlett’s Deer Ranch, and natural attractions like Rainbow Springs and Ocala Caverns. Sadly, as Florida tourism moved into the theme park era, scores of smaller attractions and their related businesses were abandoned. Author Tim Hollis revisits these once-thriving tourist spots and what happened when those tourists stopped coming.

Track the history of the Florida East Coast Railway from its beginning in 1885-present day.

The benchmark for US railroad operations, the Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway is often referred to by other American railroads as the best-maintained and -operated railroad in the country. The FEC Railway can trace its lineage back to December 31, 1885, the day Henry M. Flagler purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax River Railway. The FEC was known for its famous passenger trains, and the last scheduled FEC Railway passenger train ran on July 31, 1968, due to the work stoppage by the nonoperating unions that began on January 22, 1963. Although without passenger trains since 1968, the FEC's partner, All Aboard Florida, with its Brightline trains, will soon establish a new standard for privately operated rail passenger service in America. Today, caboose-less, the FEC operates numerous high-speed freight trains between Jacksonville and Miami.

The town of Hastings owes its existence to Standard Oil Company cofounder Henry Flagler, who, by 1886, was building a hotel in St. Augustine. In 1890, Flagler invited his cousin Thomas Horace Hastings to establish a model farm to raise vegetables for the hotels he was building along the east coast of Florida. It soon became widely known that there was big money to be made in agriculture in Florida. The mild winters gave Hastings a significant advantage over other areas of the nation, and entrepreneurs from the north and west came to seek their fortunes. The story of Hastings is the story of a town that once was the center for pioneering the production of winter vegetables for cities and towns throughout the eastern United States. It is a story of a group of strong, industrious, and creative people who made a lasting impact on the history of Florida.

At well over 100 years old, Tampa Union Station is one of the few historic buildings in Tampa that still serves its original purpose. Designed by architect J.F. Leitner of Wilmington, North Carolina, Tampa Union Station has seen millions of travelers pass through its doors since its 1912 opening--from servicemen and women to "flower children" and from families on vacation to college kids setting out on their own. Once threatened with demolition, the train station reopened its doors to the traveling public in 1998 following a multimillion-dollar restoration. Through images from archives and individuals, Tampa Union Station captures moments in time related to this iconic building, including pictures of trains such as Seaboard Air Line's Silver Meteor and Atlantic Coast Line's Tampa Special, as well as other fascinating looks at life at the station.

Banking in the sparsely settled, frontier Florida of the nineteenth century was not for the timid or the easily discouraged. Being neither of these, the indomitable William Boyd Barnett opened a private bank in Jacksonville in 1877 that would later bear his name. Barnett and his two sons built a successful family business, and by the early 1880s, their bank had become the largest in Florida. During the next several decades, the bank played a part in a number of historically significant events, from the financing of the Disston land purchase that solidified the state's finances in the 1880s to the rebuilding of Jacksonville after the destructive 1901 fire. Over the course of its 120-year history, Barnett maintained a significant presence in Florida's economic development and in the evolution of the American banking industry. The Barnett name became synonymous with sound, conservative, well-managed banking, and at the time of its sale in 1998, Barnett was the oldest and largest banking organization in Florida. The story of this company, however, is more than just a series of strong leaders or the annual recap of asset growth and profitability. It is the story of the thousands of people, both employees and customers, who played a vital part in the bank's success. Showcasing vintage photographs and a detailed historical narrative,

The first orange groves, planted in St. Augustine in the 1500s by Ponce de León, were the precursor to what would become an integral part of Florida’s identity.

Orange groves slowly spread across the state, inspiring horticultural and manufacturing ingenuity. Discover the story behind Deland’s eccentric “citrus wizard” Lue Gim Gong, the rise and fall of smuggler Jesse Fish and the silver-tongued politician William J. Howey, who made his fortune selling plots of groveland through the 1920s. Celebrate the heyday of orange tourism and the farmers who weathered freezes, floods and citrus greening. Join author Erin Thursby as she explores the history of the Sunshine State’s most famous crop.

From the 1890s through the 1920s, the postcard was an extraordinarily popular means of communication, and many of the postcards produced during this "golden age" can today be considered works of art. Postcard photographers traveled the length and breadth of the nation snapping photographs of busy street scenes, documenting local landmarks, and assembling crowds of local children only too happy to pose for a picture. These images, printed as postcards and sold in general stores across the country, survive as telling reminders of an important era in America's history.

Flagler County was created in 1917 from portions of southern St. Johns County and northern Volusia County. The county was named after Henry Morrison Flagler, a railroad and oil tycoon, who was a developer of the Florida East Coast Railway during the 1880s and 1900s. Bunnell, located 30 miles south of St. Augustine, was established as the county seat. Joseph Marion Hernandez, the first Hispanic to serve in the US Congress, had three successful sugar plantations in Flagler County until they were burned down by Native Americans in 1836, during the Second Seminole War. Marine Studios, later named Marineland, opened in 1938 as the world's first underwater  motion picture studio. The economic driving force in the county until the early 1970s was its agriculture and forestry industry. In the late 1960s, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) purchased 22,000 acres of timberland and established the retirement community of Palm Coast. Today, the county thrives upon successful real estate and service industries.

Maas Brothers opened in 1886, and for more than 100 years it was the commercial and social hub for generations of Tampa Bay shoppers. From its historic downtown Tampa store, to its sleek St. Petersburg location, to branches throughout central and west Florida (in cities like Lakeland, Sarasota, and Clearwater), Maas Brothers was a Florida Suncoast institution. The department store was known and respected for its casual and quality merchandise, fashion shows, popular in-store restaurants that featured its signature cinnamon twists, and countless traditions. A founding unit of the Allied Stores Corporation, Maas Brothers became one of the company's most profitable divisions. For most of its existence, the department store faced little competition throughout its trading area, but Maas Brothers fell victim to department store industry changes in the 1980s. It was combined with Miami's Jordan Marsh division in 1987 but gradually lost its identity. In 1991, the Maas Brothers name, along with many of its downtown locations, became a part of Tampa Bay history.