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Serving Pasco since 1981/Serving Lutz since 1964

Dade City Historic Preservation Advisory Board

30 years and counting for Dade City Commissioner

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Scott Black was only 25 years old when he was first elected to the Dade City Commission, in 1990.

Three decades later, he remains just as passionate about the post.

“I still get excited about the meetings, I still feel like I’m learning things, I still feel like I’m kind of young with it,” Black said in a recent interview with The Laker/Lutz News.

Scott Black has been serving on the Dade City Commission for 30 years and counting. He was first elected in April 1990. (Courtesy of City of Dade City)

The commissioner, now 55,  jokes he’s almost in denial about serving the municipality for so long.

“I keep redoing the math and it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what happened here?’ I’m noticing more and more that I’m not the youngest one in the room anymore,” he said.

Black’s milestone was recognized during a recent commission meeting. He will also be formally recognized by the Florida League of Cities later on this year.

A passion for service
Growing up in Trilby, Black always had an interest in politics and community pride. He held various leadership roles in organizations such as the 4-H Club and Future Business Leaders of America while attending Pasco Middle School and Pasco High School. “I was always running for an office,” even during his youth, he recalled.

As a young adult in the late 1980s, Black and his family moved to “the big city” of Dade City 7 miles south of his original hometown. Almost instantly, he became interested in local affairs and attending commission meetings.

Once the next election cycle came around, Black figured he’d try his hand at becoming a city commissioner. “I thought, ‘You know, it would be kind of fun to run,’” he said.

Black won that April 1990 election by just four votes, unseating then incumbent William Dennis. He’s gone on to be re-elected six times over, running unopposed for five of those elections.

Black, a full-time insurance agent, has appreciated the decision-making role ever since — valuing the ability to help solve problems and concerns of local residents: “I’ve been very pleased with it, and I’ve been very challenged by it. It’s one of those things where you can actually go in and make a difference within a few minutes.”

Over the years, Black has simultaneously served as the city’s mayor on four separate occasions. He’s held countless roles in numerous other boards and committees, such as the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and Dade City Historic Preservation Advisory Board, among others. He was president of the Florida League of Cities, from 2001 to 2002.

Serving in city government for so long, Black teased he often feels “on assignment” when he visits or vacations other cities, taking notes on any interesting features and services and utilities: “My wife has joked that I notice things like fire hydrants and the wastewater treatment plants that most people don’t notice, just because I’ve gotten involved in things related to the city.”

Forever home
To Black, Dade City will always be home. He can’t imagine living anywhere else.

The commissioner takes pleasure in the small-town, tight-knit community, rather than a big city lifestyle others have pursued.

“I enjoy the neighborly aspect of it,” Black said of Dade City living. “Seeing people that you grew up with and seeing people that were your schoolteachers or people that go to church with, it’s just something special.”

Simply put, in Dade City, “People are very nice,” he said.

The commissioner doesn’t take for granted having a commute shorter than most. His home sits a mere five blocks from his Fifth Street office. Being within walking distance to the local post office, bank, City Hall and downtown restaurants is another bonus, too. “My biggest challenge is crossing Seventh Street every day,” he quipped.

Dade City’s growth has been at a slower pace compared to other parts of Pasco County and the greater Tampa Bay area, Black acknowledged. Yet, he remains bullish on the city’s future prospects.

One of the more positive changes has been the revitalization of the historic downtown area — with an emphasis on unique eateries and antique shopping opportunities to help draw tourists and day-trippers, he said.

“I think a lot of small towns our size would give their left eye to have a downtown like we have — just the opportunities here and the neat features,” he observed.

Upgrades and extensions to the Roy Hardy Trail, tied in with future plans for a multi-purpose downtown splash park, are other investments the commissioner feels will help raise the city’s profile in coming years.

Said Black, “People are always saying, ‘We need to do more things for our kids in Dade City,’ and that’s what we’re doing.”

He thinks future generations will appreciate those efforts.

Meanwhile, this year is setting up to be one of the more distinctive periods during Black’s tenure on the commission.

The commission has held virtual meetings since April, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The municipal election — which has been rescheduled to June 30 — will see two, if not three, new faces on the five-member commission.

Commissioners Nicole Deese Newlon and Eunice Penix are not seeking re-election for Seats 4 and 5, respectively, while incumbent Commissioner Jim Shive is running against Matthew Wilson for Seat 3.

And, the changeover will come while the city gears up for a tighter budget, also due to COVID-19.

Black plans to use his extensive experience to help bring new commissioners up to speed and to help foster an atmosphere of collaboration.

Black put it like this: “Hopefully, I can help find common ground and consensus, and we can all move ahead. …We have a common goal and that’s keeping Dade City viable, successful, rebuilding.”

Black’s current term doesn’t expire until 2022, but he is already thinking ahead to a future run for re-election.

“I still have things I’d like to see us accomplish. I still feel useful,” Black said.

He went on: “But, the important thing to remember is it’s not about me, it’s not about (the commission), it’s about the City of Dade City.”

Published June 10, 2020

Pasco County has history of health scares

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The global pandemic known as coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has claimed lives — including thousands across the United States — but, this health threat isn’t Pasco County’s first experience with uncertain times.

In fact, weeks after the county was formed by the Florida Legislature on June 2, 1887, it faced a deadly yellow fever.

At that time, Pasco had just one medical doctor, James G. Wallace, according to Bill Dayton, past president of the Dade City Historic Preservation Advisory Board.

The Spanish influenza made headlines on the front page of The Dade City Banner dated Oct. 4, 1918. Two weeks later, a sick list published the names of several health care professionals, including Dr. C.F. Touchton whose condition the article described as ‘alarming.’ (Courtesy of the University of Florida Digital Collections)

The epidemic hit Florida’s port cities first, then spread to Tampa where five people died from yellow fever in September of 1886.

“It was reported that hundreds of people fled their homes, literally leaving meals on their tables,” Carol Jeffares Hedman wrote, in a history column published on Dec. 18, 2001, in The Tampa Tribune.

Dade City was still unincorporated and serving as a temporary county seat, when the Pasco County Commission adopted a countywide quarantine in 1887.

“There were no health departments back then,” said Glen Thompson, an environmental specialist who worked for the Pasco County Health Department from 1973 until 2006.

The Florida Southern Railroad had been transporting goods and products to Dade City since 1885. This new railroad also provided an opportunity to carry yellow fever into Pasco County.

“The Pasco County Commission voted to pay $5 per day to post guards at the Dade City Depot, among other points of entry,” Thompson explained.

With little knowledge of yellow fever, one popular theory suggested it traveled underground at 2 miles a day.

Experiments were tried, including one that involved firing military canons, on the premise that the shock waves could kill yellow fever.

John Wall, a physician and mayor of Tampa, from 1878 to 1880, was one of the first to point out that mosquitoes carried the disease.

More than 100 students and campus employees eating at the William P. McDonald Student Center at St. Leo College became sick in 1980 with a foodborne outbreak attributed to the Norwalk virus. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

Wall reported that in 1881 — 20 years before Walter Reed led a medical team in Central America and confirmed that fact in 1901.

Reed became famous for eliminating the threat of yellow fever for workers completing construction of the Panama Canal.

As for Wall, he contracted and survived yellow fever in 1871. He was still pleading his case when he died of a heart attack in 1895 while addressing the Florida Medical Association in Gainesville.

The Spanish influenza — the deadliest plague in history — claimed the lives of 100 million, worldwide, at the height of World War 1, according to “The Great Influenza,” a 2005 New York Times bestseller by author John Barry.

More people died from the Spanish influenza in that single year than the Black Death had killed in a century.

Local families were not spared from the suffering.

The first death from Spanish influenza reported by The Dade City Banner occurred in 1918.

It involved 21-year-old William Craig, a Dade City native, who was stationed in Camp Jackson, South Carolina.

A sign of the times posted at the offices of the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) in Dade City. The department updates its COVID-19 dashboard twice daily on its website at FDOH.maps.arcgis.com/covid-19. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The newspaper received a telegram reporting the death had occurred in the base camp’s hospital.

“Such was the sad cry that passed through Dade City this morning,” the newspaper later reported on its front page. “The family has requested that the body be shipped to Dade City.”

Churches closed, but The Dade City Banner reported on Oct. 25, 1918 that prayer services would be held on the courthouse lawn at 5 o’clock in the evening for divine intervention “…as a matter of precaution.”

Florida saw a total of 4,000 deaths in 1918 from Spanish influenza, and thousands more weakened survivors would die from pneumonia.

The Florida Legislature passed an act in 1931 to create county health departments using state funding, according to a historical account published in concert with the health department’s 75th anniversary.

But, it wasn’t until 1947 when the Pasco County Health Department first opened an office in Dade City.

Another Pasco County health challenge arose on Nov. 5, 1980, at what was then St. Leo College. It involved the outbreak of Norwalk Virus Gastroenteritis.

A 1985 report by the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health said, in part, that: “College officials notified the local health department that more than 100 students complaining of sudden onset of abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea had reported to the Student Health Center since the previous evening.”

Former health department employee Thompson recalls: “We only had three health specialists on staff and were quickly overwhelmed with medical surveys and reports.”

Thompson joined a task force working with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services and the Tampa Regional Laboratory to examine students and campus employees who had eaten one or more meals at the campus cafeteria from Nov. 3, 1980 to Nov. 5, 1980.

“The Norwalk virus was most likely spread by a combination of exposure to contaminated tossed salad and person-to-person transmission,” concluded the report submitted to the American Journal of Epidemiology. However, the report also noted, “the source of contamination was not identified.”

Now, the health department’s Pasco office is the midst of working to prevent the spread of COVID-19, while also continuing its work to address a Hepatitis A outbreak —an ongoing battle since 2016.

Pasco County led the state with 415 cases in 2019, followed by Pinellas County with 377 cases.

Since January 2019, there have been more than 3,200 cases in Florida associated with Hepatitis A. While this outbreak has not yet ended, Pasco showed new cases trending downward to nine so far in April 2020, according to Melissa Watts, public information officer with the Florida Department of Health in New Port Richey.

As of the morning of April 20, the number of positive COVID-19 cases in Pasco County, was 207, including three deaths.

Published April 22, 2020

Clay Sink remains; others fade away

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Small communities with names such as “Mexico,” “Drexel,” “Ehren,” and  “Chipco” appeared on Pasco County maps more than 100 years ago.

They were located along the Orange Belt Railway, the first — and last — railroad to cross Central Pasco with a potential for future development.

Still moss-draped as it was when the Slaughters buried their infant daughter in 1873, the Clay Sink Cemetery is located on a hill and is the final resting place for six generations. Descendants still live in Pasco County. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The names of those small towns now are mere footnotes in Pasco County’s history.

But, a tiny community has survived.

Surrounded by hundreds of acres of the Withlacoochee State Forest, a 2-square-mile area is still known as “Clay Sink.”

Call it a quirk of fate.

Unlike many of Florida’s rural outposts, by the 1930s, the greater Clay Sink area had a complex economy.

In addition to farming and ranching, the expansion of the Atlantic Coast Line railroad spurred a timber harvesting industry and a turpentine business.

“It was lonely living oftentimes, but we had the radio to listen to programs like the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ and ‘Fibber McGee and Molly,’” recalled Jean Brinson Ward, who was 7 years old when her father monitored the area in the 1940s from the fire tower for the U.S. Forestry Service.

A wood-frame building, erected in 1904 on this site, served as the Clay Sink Missionary Baptist Church until the present building was constructed of heart pine in 1956. It remains one of the few churches still located on state forestland. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The settlement has been known by different names.

In a land transaction on May 20, 1862, Jesse Sumner sold 120 acres to Harrison H. Slaughter and Martha Ann McKinney Slaughter.

Martha had three children from a first marriage in 1859, and at least 10 children with Harrison, who had escaped a Yankee POW camp at the start of the Civil War and fled to the Everglades.

The settlement that soon developed initially was called Slaughter, after this pioneering family.

But later, it was called Clay Sink, after the local clay sinkhole.

Life wasn’t exactly easy.

Farms were worked in the intense heat of a Florida sun without the benefit of modern air conditioning or diesel tractors.

Families grew their own pork, chicken, beef, and planted gardens for vegetables.

And, they saw plenty of wildlife.

During an oral history with the Citrus County Historical Society on August 26, 2006, Frances Pritchell, a lifelong resident of Clay Sink, described what happened to her husband when he came home from a late shift at Pasco Packing in Dade City: “It was dark, and when he turned out the lights at the front gate and opened the gate, something ran into him and like to have knocked him down. He thought it was a dog. He came out around the house, but the dog was in the yard. Well, when he got along there about the chimney, it squalled out. It was a panther, and he had to go on around it to come in the house. About that time, it hollered again. A panther. And then about that time the dogs taken after it, and that was it. But, there are panthers here.”

Built as a one-room schoolhouse in 1912, this structure has served as the fellowship hall for the Clay Sink Missionary Baptist Church since school consolidation in 1943. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

During Prohibition, the Dade City Banner reported this news item on Sept. 22, 1925:

“Saturday a raid in the Slaughter neighborhood resulted in the capture of two stills, both small ones.”

No arrests were made in one instance, the newspaper reported. But in the other, “Bob Johnson, colored, not only lost his lard can outfit and a gallon of shine, but was also lodged in Jail.”

A year later, the Dade City Banner reported on the burial of Roy Slaughter at Clay Sink Cemetery. He was a veteran of World War I and also…”a member of Pershing’s punitive expedition into Mexico during the border troubles caused by the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).”

During World War II, a bombing range less than a mile east of Clay Sink was operated by the U.S. Army for testing Mustard Gas, an oily liquid used as a shell filling, according to Jean Brinson Ward, vice chairman of the Dade City Historic Preservation Advisory Board.

Now the home of the Florida Bass Conservation Center—the state’s major freshwater fish production hatchery—the bombing range was used to test the effects on goats and rabbits.

Details from a 1956 Pasco County map show Slaughter as a settlement in the extreme northwest corner of Pasco County. Richloam is locatedDetails from a 1956 Pasco County map show Slaughter as a settlement in the extreme northwest corner of Pasco County. Richloam is located across the county line in Hernando County. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

“We could feel the earth shake when the bombs were dropped, and our house was in Richloam, which was about 9 (miles) or 10 miles from the range,” Ward said.

In an article published by The Tampa Tribune on Dec. 26, 2007, Pasco County Attorney Robert Sumner said people wanted to live in Clay Sink “where they were free to do what they wanted to do without being fenced in, where they could develop their own church.”

Back then, Sumner added, “the people who came to Florida came for the same reasons people originally came to the United States.”

Sumner’s own family history dates back to the 1820s, before Pasco County was created.

In October 1936, the federal government started buying forestland around Clay Sink, first from the Schroeder Land and Timber Company for $3 an acre, and then from area families such as the ancestors of 84-year-old Henry Boyett.

“They didn’t want our cattle eating the young pine trees they had planted,” Boyett recalled during an interview at the fellowship hall. “We tried to convince them there was too much turpentine in those saplings for cattle to digest.”

By 1939, the purchase of private-owned farms was completed to begin restoring the forests and wetlands under the U.S government’s Withlacoochee Resettlement Act.

To this day, Clay Sink remains a small cluster of farmsteads and homes due to the Great Depression and the loss of grazing lands.

For Boyett, though, it’s a desirable place.

He describes it as “peace and quiet, and it can never be developed.

“It’s the most fantastic thing I can tell you,” Boyette said.

In the stillness of this place, rainfall could be heard falling on the tin roof of the fellowship hall.

Doug Sanders has a penchant for unearthing interesting stories about local history. His sleuthing skills have been developed through his experiences in newspaper and government work. If you have an idea for a future history column, contact Doug at .

Published July 24, 2019

‘Cow Palace’ attracted music greats

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The block structure was built in 1957, without heat or air conditioning, according to records kept by the Pasco County Property Appraiser’s Office.

It was located in Carver Heights, a predominantly black neighborhood where many people lived hard-scrabble lives.

Scott Place, left, and Al Brown are hoping planned restorations can save the historic Cow Palace in Dade City. (Courtesy of the Chitlin’ Circuit Preservation Society)

And, during the next 20 years, the building attracted performers who would become some of the biggest names in soul-blues and R&B music.

Each of those musicians would travel down Bull Road — still a dirt lane southeast of Dade City. They would go past Ferguson Lake to make their way to the stage, inside the block structure.

It was a venue with a spacious dance floor and ornate Spanish-tiled bar.

And, that’s where bar-goers, who could get rowdy, had the chance to see performances by B.B. King or Ray Charles.

More often than not, people could hear the loud music outside as they passed the open pastures, as they did on the night that James Brown played.

Despite its remote location and wild weekends, this block structure became a juke joint variously known as “Rabbit’s Place,” “Jake’s Lakeside Tavern” and the “Cow Palace.”

It was part of the so-called “Chitlin’ Circuit,” which the National Public Radio defines as “a touring circuit that provided employment for hundreds of black musicians and brought about the birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”

Glenn Thompson, secretary of the Pasco County Historical Society, said the circuit’s name “derives from the soul food item chitterling” which is made from stewed pig intestines.

Thompson is a big fan of the local Chitlin’ Circuit Preservation Society, co-founded by Scott Place, which is seeking funding to restore and save one of Florida’s historic blues clubs.

“We want to be like the Bradfordville Blues Club in Tallahassee,” Place said. That juke joint was shuttered for nearly 20 years before it reopened in the 1990s.

The dance floor and bar at the Cow Palace as it looked in April 2016.

Place also points to other success stories on the old Chitlin’ Circuit, such as the Jackson House in Tampa, the Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg and the Cotton Club in Gainesville.

Place, a Dade City blues musician who performs under the name “Howlin’ Buzz,” hopes future generations will have a chance to know more about the Cow Palace and its historic links to stars like King, a relatively unknown artist who brought a Chitlin’ Circuit tour to the Cow Palace in the late 1950s.

Buddy Guy played at the Cow Palace early in his career and was later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Eric Clapton and B.B. King on March 14, 2005.

Writing on his Facebook page, Guy said: “The tone (B.B. King) got out of that guitar, the way he shook his left wrist, the way he squeezed the strings…Man, he came out with that, and it was all new to the whole guitar-playin’ world.”

The Cow Palace attracted stars and fans to a very poor neighborhood.

“There was nothing like that anywhere in Tampa Bay,” recalled George Romagnoli, in a news report published 25 years ago.

First subdivided in 1946 by Stanley Cochrane, the subdivision where the Cow Palace sits likely was named after the renowned botanist George Washington Carver, according to Bill Dayton, a member and former chairman of the Dade City Historic Preservation Advisory Board.

“Maybe he had an admiration for Carver,” Dayton told The St. Petersburg Times in 1998.  “Or maybe he just thought it was an appropriate name for a black subdivision,” Dayton added.

No regularly hosted events have been held at the Cow Palace since the mid-1970s, but a jam session there two years ago drew approximately 100 musicians and guests.

“We found out there was no commercial zoning, and that’s what we need for live entertainment in the future,” Place said.

Even with rezoning issues and the challenges of restoration, Place believes people would stand in line to enter the Cow Palace as they did 50 years ago.

“They would admit as many people as possible (back then). But, there was only one way in — or out,” Place said, with a smile.

To find out more about the Cow Palace and efforts to restore it, email .

Doug Sanders has a penchant for unearthing interesting stories about local history. His sleuthing skills have been developed through his experiences in newspaper and government work. If you have an idea for a future history column, contact Doug at .

Published May 24, 2017