The Laker/Lutz News

Doug Sanders

Cummer Sons Cypress played huge role in Lacoochee

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Two events occurred in 1923 that would have a significant impact on the community of Lacoochee, in Northeast Pasco County.

Arthur and Waldo Cummer — as the grandsons of Jacob Cummer — brought the Cummer Sons Cypress Company to the county.

The fully electric cypress sawmill and box factory would go on to become one the largest sawmill operations in the United States.

The company also would play a role in providing jobs for survivors of the Rosewood Massacre, which occurred in January 1923.

Nearly a century ago, one of the largest sawmill operations in the United States was located in Lacoochee, in northeast Pasco County. (Courtesy of Bob McKinstry)

Contemporary news reports said that massacre — which destroyed the tiny Black community in Levy County — resulted directly from a white woman’s false claims that she’d been raped by a black man.

In his book, published in 2005, author William Powell Jones recounted how managers for Cummer “arranged for a train to drive through the swamps, picking up survivors of the Rosewood Massacre and offering them housing and employment in the brand-new colored quarters in Lacoochee.”

Arthur and Waldo Cummer’s father, Wellington Wilson Cummer, first arrived in town with his riding gear, complete with jodhpurs and boots, holding a riding crop under his arm.

“It was strange attire compared to the casual dress (of the day),” noted Nell Moody Woodcock, a long-time resident of Lacoochee and later a reporter for The Tampa Tribune.

Woodcock’s name is among nearly 100 links on the Pasco County history website, Fivay.org — featuring people sharing memories of the Cummer Sons Cypress Company.

Jacob Cummer, known as “Uncle Jacob” to family and friends, had vast timber holdings in several states.

Arthur Cummer explained why the company chose to locate in Lacoochee, in testimony given before the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1934.

“We located the sawmill plant at Lacoochee in order to be in reasonable reach,” Arthur Cummer said.

Described as a point of entry for what is now known as the Green Swamp of Florida, logs arrived at the new Lacoochee sawmill from land that totaled more than 50 square miles in Pasco, Sumter and Polk counties.

Bill McKinstry, a company manager for the Lacoochee sawmills, rides a logging train to Lacoochee on April 25, 1939. (Courtesy of Bob McKinstry)

The Green Swamp is one of the state’s largest watersheds as the headwaters for the Peace River, Withlacoochee River, Ocklawaha River and Hillsborough River.

In the 1920s it was “a vast reservoir of 100-year-old cypress trees,” as described by Woodcock, in her recollections on the Cummer mills in Lacoochee.

At its peak, workers lived in approximately 100 homes along sand streets with wood sidewalks in Lacoochee.

Cummer was the largest employer in Pasco County with more than 1,100 employees, and it was one of few employers across the country that provided jobs during the Great Depression.

Having the largest payroll in the county made the Lacoochee office a prime target — and the company fell victim to three masked bandits who escaped with $11,700 in cash.

The work was grueling.

Ronald Stanley, who was put on a logging train by his father one summer in the early 1940s, was among the workers.

He described the tough working conditions he faced, recorded on the Fivay.org website.

He awoke at daybreak and spent hours waist-deep hauling sawed-down cypress logs out of the swamp.

It was hot, and there were mosquitoes, and the danger of snakes and alligators.

“For all this summer fun, I was paid $.45 per hour (typically under $5 per day),” Stanley recalls on Fivay.org.

One of three steam shovels that had been used to dig out the Panama Canal later was purchased by the Cummer lumber company to haul logs at the Lacoochee sawmill. (Courtesy of Pioneer Florida Museum & Village)

During World War II, Cummer employed 50 German soldiers from the prisoner of war work camp in Dade City.

One POW was 18-year-old Arthur Lang, a tank commander from Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps.

He was smitten by a teenaged girl named Mildred.

He managed to exchange handwritten notes to Mildred when no one was looking. She worked with her mother at the Cummer’s crate mill.

“I regret it to this day that on the last day there, I could not shake her hand,” Lang wrote after he was back in Germany, after the war.

At Lacoochee, the Cummer operations were immense for this self-contained company town.

The sawmill alone measures 228 feet by 45 feet. The mill also included a veneer plant, which was 228 feet by 45 feet. It also had a crate factory, of 200 feet by 100 feet; and a lathe and shingle mill, with a capacity of 60,000 lathe per day, according to the story “Big Cypress Mill Completed at Lacoochee, Florida,” published in The Manufacturer’s Record on Nov. 22, 1923.

From 1934 to 1940, the Cummer mill in Lacoochee averaged 13 million board feet each year. The company set a record in 1937, producing 25 million board feet.

To make sure that it was not all work and no play, the company sponsored a semi-pro baseball team called the Lacoochee Indians.

That team won the Central Coast championship in 1947, in a league that also included San Antonio, Dade City and Brooksville.

James Timothy “Mudcat” Grant recorded memories of his father working at the Lacoochee mills. He later became the first black American League pitcher to win a World Series game in 1965.

Mudcat also recalls weekend movies starring Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

“Every time I go to Angel Stadium, Gene (Autry) comes through, and we get a chance to speak,” Grant told the St. Petersburg Times on April 9, 1989. “The first thing he says is: ‘How is everything in Lacoochee?’”

Autry was the owner of the Angels Major League baseball team from 1961 to 1997.

Alyce Ferrell, who worked at the Lacoochee Post Office, met her future husband at a dance at the armory in Dade City.

He would fly low over Lacoochee in his Corsair F4U fighter aircraft and dip one wing of his plane. That was a signal to let Alyce know he needed to be picked up at the Army/Air base in Zephyrhills.

In 1945, Alyce married that instructor for Marine fighter pilots: Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr.

Years later ‘Ed McMahon’ would begin a 36-year career as the announcer and sidekick for television talk show host Johnny Carson.

During the decade of the 1950s, the Green Swamp was heavily logged by the Cummer Sons Cypress Company.

The company, which hummed along for decades, finally came to its end near the close of the 1950s.

“It took time to process all the logs which had been gathered at the Lacoochee sawmill, but the last cypress was finally milled on June 5, 1959,” wrote historian Alice Hall for The Tampa Tribune on July 14, 1984.

Although the community voted against incorporating as a town in 1954, several companies have attempted business operations at the old Cummer site including Wood Mosaic Corporation, Interpace, GH Lockjoint, and Cal-Maine Foods.

A precast concrete plant is currently up and operating as a supplier for major road projects in Florida. The Dade City Business Center bought this site in 2019 for $1.2 million and is leasing the land to the concrete plant. Nearly 100 new jobs are expected, once the plant is running at full capacity.

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 August 18, 2021

Searching for answers about Eddie Lewis

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The word “Ehren,” of German origin, means “to honor.”

And, an example of doing just that can be found at the Mt. Carmel Cemetery, in the once-thriving community of Ehren, off Ehren Cutoff in Land O’ Lakes.

For more than 114 years, a small grave in this 1-acre cemetery, has been marked by the name “Eddie” at the top of a small tombstone.

Karen Matthews, of Land O’ Lakes, and Patricia Puckett, of Dade City, clean the grave marker of Eddie Lewis, buried at the Mt. Carmel Cemetery in 1906. This burial ground is one of four historic African American cemeteries that still exist in Pasco County. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

This is the final resting place for Eddie Lewis, who died on Nov. 8, 1906, at the age of 14.

He was buried there, at a time of segregated homes, churches, schools and cemeteries.

“Eddie’s was the only marked grave with a headstone and mount when I first stopped to see the cemetery,” says Karen Matthews, of Land O’ Lakes, who lives six miles away.

“It’s obvious his parents put all their love and money in honoring their dead son, and I was overcome with wonder and curiosity about his short life,” she said.

Eddie Lewis was born on March 17, 1892, according to the grave marker.

Public records about Eddie Lewis’ life and death are elusive.

There was no hospital in Ehren at that time, and no medical records are available.

No death certificate is available, either.

Florida didn’t begin requiring death certificates until the 1920s, according to Jeff Cannon, the former director of the Pasco County Historic Preservation Society.

While not much is known about Eddie Lewis’ life, insights about the community of Ehren can be gleaned from historic records, accounts of local historians and from newspaper reports.

For instance, the Orange Belt Railroad arrived in 1888.

The local post office was established on Jan. 17, 1890, to serve 300 people, according to an application to the postmaster general in Washington D.C.

Elizabeth Riegler MacManus and Susan A. MacManus, authors of “Citrus, Sawmills, Critters & Crackers,” described the working conditions in the community more than a century ago.

White workers cut wood to feed the wood-burning trains, while Black laborers cut railroad ties to maintain and expand the railroad tracks, the historians wrote.

Before cleaning.
After cleaning.

During the 1900s, Blacks in Ehren worked at a turpentine still built southeast of the Ehren Pine Company, collecting resin from trees, in heavy barrels.

The only other source of real income was agriculture where local farmers produced crops of watermelons, cantaloupes, onions, tomatoes, cane syrup and peanuts.

Historian Cannon described the devastation caused by a fire on March 28, 1920 that burned the Ehren Pine Company to the ground.

“Within a few minutes, the sawmill was ablaze along with a large boarding house and two homes,” Cannon wrote in 2011. Total losses were reported at $125,000, according to his research.

The Dade City Banner reported on April 2, 1920: “With the sawmill gone there is little left of Ehren, and its future depends largely upon whether Mr. Mueller and his associates rebuild or not.”

Historian Cannon observed: “Although research has revealed a great deal of information about the sawmill town, there still remains that which we do not know.”

It’s not even known precisely when Mt. Carmel Cemetery was founded.

Approximately 40 graves were found in the cemetery in September 2006, by SDII Global, which conducted a ground-penetrating radar survey of the cemetery.

Seven of those were marked with traditional headstones, but the others had wooden markers, which had rotted away.

“The earliest marked grave is the infant daughter of T. & M. Horton, dated Dec. 23, 1903,” according to Cannon.

The genesis of this column was a 2020 request from Matthews, who asked for help in tracking down more information about Eddie Lewis.

On June 20, 2009, the cemetery was officially designated a historic site by the county’s historic preservation committee.

Although little could be learned about him, some online searches helped to provide more details about his family.

The online source FindAGrave.com identifies Robert Milton Lewis and Jane Lloyd Lewis, as Eddie’s parents.

Additionally, handwritten records from the 1900 census (Pasco Ehren District #0129) reveal that Eddie had three brothers: Robert, born in 1890; Montine, born 1895; and Abraham, born in in 1900. He also had a sister, Ida, born in 1887.

Other information about Eddie’s family was found in additional census records and Ancestry.com.

Those records say that Eddie’s father was born in 1866 in Mississippi and his mother was born in 1871 in Florida.

His parents, according to the records, were married in 1886.

Records indicated that both parents could read and write, and Eddie’s father worked in a “log yard sawmill.”

Records from the 1910 census reveal that the Lewis family moved to Clearwater, and that Eddie’s father was the owner of a blacksmith shop.

Those records also indicate that Eddie had another brother, John, who was born in 1904, but that his sister, Ida, had apparently died because her name was not listed in the census.

Eddie’s parents are not buried at Mt. Carmel Cemetery, according to obituaries found on Newspapers.com.

His father died in Clearwater at the age of 89 on July 5, 1956. His mother died in Pinellas County in 1945 at the age of 74.

Although the ground survey did not identify any names at the Mt. Carmel Cemetery, at least four interments are listed by PeopleLegacy.com:

  • Minnie Blocker (1876 to 1954)
  • Lonnie G. Bowen (born 1875)
  • Lydia Gibbs (1867-1936)
  • W.G. Gibbs (Died 1935)

Any Information about others buried at the cemetery remains a mystery — at least for now.

Published July 14, 2021

Here’s a fish story for the ages

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Here’s a big fish story that has its origins in the year 1923.

The recounting of it begins with a visit to a house in San Antonio in 1974, to repair a ringer on a wall telephone.

Ken Zifer was assigned by Florida Telephone Company, at that time, to maintain the San Antonio 588 exchange.

Will Plazewski, local historian and water clerk for the City of San Antonio, helped to obtain this photograph, which shows, from left: Matt Klassen, an unidentified man in the center, and Frederick Joseph ‘Fritz’ Friebel holding his record largemouth bass in 1923. (Courtesy of Jack Vogel)

“When I left his house to put my hand tools back in the truck, Mr. Walter Friebel followed me outside,” recalls Zifer, who now lives in Cleveland, Tennessee.

“Being an avid fisherman all my life and associated with Great Bass Fisherman, I asked him if he was doing any fishing in this neck of the woods,” said Zifer, who was 27 at the time that he made the telephone repair.

Friebel lived across the street from the San Antonio City Park and the St. Anthony Catholic School, so Zifer knew the house was not far from Clear Lake, in neighboring St. Leo.

Friebel told Zifer that he had not been fishing for quite a long time.

Then he told Zifer: “I (once) was paddling the boat when my brother caught the World Record Bass.”

Zifer asked: “Would you mind telling me about it?”

And that begins a look at a relatively unknown chapter in Pasco County history.

Born in Germany in 1893, Friebel’s brother, Frederick Joseph “Fritz” Friebel, had used only one fishing rod and reel, and he did not let Walter fish that day.

Fritz Friebel was a traveling salesman.

Francis Finn was 75 when he told the St. Petersburg Times in a 2005 story that his uncle Fritz was a generous man who would bring roller skates, baseball gloves, bats and balls for the kids to play with during the Great Depression.

Fritz Friebel reportedly caught his bass from Moody Lake north of San Antonio. He wanted to keep other fishermen ‘off the track’ from where he really was fishing at Big Fish Lake (pictured here) on the Barthle Brothers Ranch northwest of San Antonio. (Courtesy of Southwest Florida Water Management District)

Fritz Friebel was an avid angler, too, who lugged his tackle along with him, as he made his rounds across Florida, selling hardware.

Sources say he went fishing with a couple of friends at Big Fish Lake in 1923.

Online records with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) indicate his famous fish catch happened on a Saturday, May 19, 1923.

That wasn’t the way the fisherman recalled it, in a story published on Oct. 12, 1952, in The Tampa Tribune.

In that account, he said: “It was a Sunday morning when I should have been in church, and I had to call a grocer to open his store to get the fish weighed.”

Fritz Friebel had landed a 20-pound, 2-ounce largemouth black bass that measured 31 inches long with a 27-inch girth.

According to Ken Duke’s story for ESPN Sports on Aug. 7, 2009, Fritz Friebel used a Creek Chub No. 700 Straight Pike Minnow “to catch the giant fish.”

Five years later he was featured in a rod and reel catalog under the heading: “The Black Bass Record has been Broken, Not Cracked or Bent, but Crushed, Torn Apart and Split Wide Open.”

The catalog added this: “Gentlemen anglers all! Please leap to your feet and throw your hats into the air. Rah, Rah! To Mr. Friebel and his black bass!”

Onlookers in 1923 accused Fritz Friebel of cheating by adding pounds with lead sinkers in his fish.

The family of Fritz Friebel had this new marker built and shipped to Florida, where new generations can read about the fishing legend in the San Antonio City Park. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

But, the fisherman debunked that assertion.

“Friebel pulled out his pocketknife,” Duke writes, “slit the fish’s belly open and suggested that they reach inside to find out.”

Fritz Friebel was a no-nonsense angler.

As his daughter explained to ESPN Sports, “Daddy didn’t own a boat. He wore the worst-looking clothes because he often waded into water up to his armpits while fishing.”

After he made the catch, the big bass was put in a block of ice at the Knights hardware store for people to come by to see it.

According to the FWC’s website, Fritz Friebel’s catch in Pasco County “…was weighed on a postal scale and witnessed, but a (state) biologist did not document it at the time to establish an official record.”

In other words, it is the largest unofficial big bass landed in Florida.

ESPN Sports says it registers as the 11th largest largemouth black bass ever caught in the world.

For years, a wooden sign commemorating Fritz Friebel’s accomplishment has stood in San Antonio’s downtown park.

Most conservation-minded anglers release large fish because of their future spawning potential.

Not Fritz Friebel: He treated his family to a big fish dinner.

Whoppers
WORLD RECORD
George W. Perry, 1932, Lake Montgomery, Georgia, 22 pounds, 4 ounces

FLORIDA RECORD: Uncertified
Frederick Joseph “Fritz” Friebel, 1923, Big Fish Lake, Pasco County, 20 pounds, 2 ounces

FLORIDA RECORD: Certified
Billy O’ Berry, 1986, unnamed lake, Polk County, 17 pounds, 2 ounces

Source: Florida Trend Magazine

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 March 24, 2021

Flying Eight-Balls member survived 30 missions

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At 6 feet and weighing less than 140 pounds, Jim Rossman was 20 years old in 1944, when he nearly lost his life over the English Channel in World War II.

A copilot of a B-24 heavy bomber, Rossman would fly 30 missions — and survive daylight attacks from Adolf Hitler’s German Luftwaffe.

Jim Rossman’s ‘Heaven Can Wait’ crew in World War II. Rossman was cross-trained to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. (Courtesy of Jim Rossman/Ted Johnson)

“I don’t know how we did it,” Rossman told The St. Petersburg Times in 2005. “I guess we were young.”

As the future owner of Pasco County Insurance Agency in Dade City, Rossman had his part in the “Greatest Generation,” a time in our nation’s history described by Tom Brokaw’s best-selling novel about the sacrifices and struggles made by veterans in World War II.

Rossman’s journey with history began with as many bananas and milkshakes as he could consume to put on enough weight to make the cut with the Army Air Forces.

He was a teenager living in Tampa when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Soon after that fateful event, Jim Rossman joined up at MacDill Field in Tampa.

His group, known as the Flying Eight-Balls, would later set sail for the United Kingdom aboard the Queen Mary on Sep. 4, 1942.

Decorated on one side with a winged bomb cartoon of a pool hall 8-Ball, Rossman’s B-24 Liberator had a thin metal skin that offered little protection against German strafing in the air, or antiaircraft fire from below.

“You’d see that plane coming in at you, firing those guns, you knew you were in for it,” Rossman said in his interview with The St. Petersburg Times.

Jim Rossman and his crew survived this crash landing despite having a full load of bombs and 164,700 pounds of fuel, approximately 2,700 gallons, onboard. (Courtesy of Jim Rossman/Ted Johnson)

A full account of the American Air Offensive against Nazi Germany is archived at the American Air Museum in Britain.

Located north of London, visitors can read a document that details the story behind the formation of the 44th Bombardment Group at Shipdam, England, and you can learn the heroic story behind Rossman and the Flying Eight-Balls.

On March 12, 1944, Rossman and his men were scheduled for a sixth mission deep into Germany when bad weather forced them to take an alternate target, the museum records show.

A closer target meant more fuel reserves. But, when flying over France, they were suddenly attacked by enemy fire.

“We (received) some antiaircraft or flak damage and lost one engine over the target,” Rossman recounted.

Since Rossman’s crew was part of the Flying Eight-Balls that day with worsening weather, the pilots returning with the most aircraft damage dropped through the clouds first and then attempted a landing.

“Unfortunately, there was more damage to (our) fuel tanks and after flying around for 3 ½-hours it came our turn to let down. We did this and flew into the clear at some 600 feet and quickly spotted a small English Fighter Base with a grass landing strip,” Rossman said, according to the museum’s records.

Rossman’s navigator did the best he could heading the B-24 Liberator in a general direction that took them out over the English Channel.

At its peak strength in 1944, the U.S. Army Air Forces employed 450,000 Americans in Britain. That included operating the first U.S. heavy bomber airfield pictured here in England at Shipdam. Nearly 30,000 of these Americans never made it back home. (Courtesy of American Air Museum)

It was then they lost another engine.

“A B-24 doesn’t fly well on two engines and we certainly couldn’t climb,” the historic document says.

Rossman and his crew cleared the White Cliffs of Dover.

Then, they flew under a high-tension power line that was 200 feet high.

With a landing in sight, Rossman’s crew lost the third engine.

“By the grace of God and nothing else, I looked out my right window and there in perfect position for landing was the fighter strip. With no time to prepare or make decisions we turned to line up with the strip. (We) made a picture-perfect belly landing, sliding in on the grass, each moment expecting the plane to disintegrate and kill us all,” Rossman said, as recorded in the museum’s archives.

The crew members of Rossman’s B-24 boosted each other out of the aircraft when it started to burst into flames.

Black smoke quickly engulfed the crash site.

“After we were taken to the hospital on this English base to be checked out, something unusual happened. Hospital attendants came bearing a man on a stretcher. He had been cleaning the windshield on an English fighter parked there. He looked up at the last moment to see (our aircraft) pass over his head. With all engines dead we made no noise and the shock almost caused him to have a heart attack,” Rossman recounted.

The crew of 10 men made it back to flying duty at Shipdam.

“I was always real careful, real conservative,” Rossman said in his interview sixteen years ago.

He made his final bombing run on May 30, 1944.

A week later, the Allied forces began the D-Day invasion along the beaches of France.

Jim Rossman found out the airlines did not want to hire such a youthful-looking pilot like him when the war was over.

The American Air Museum in Britain has exhibits and archives on the men and women of the U.S. Army Air Forces who served in England during the Second World War. (Courtesy of American Air Museum)

That is when he decided to get into the insurance business.

He hired Scott Black, another youthful-looking man who later became a commissioner and mayor of Dade City.

“Jim was a fine gentleman and a very good friend,” recalled Ted Johnson at the time of Rossman’s death in October 2014.

Johnson visited the American Air Museum in Britain years later, where he was able to take updated photographs to bring back to Jim Rossman in Dade City.

Much of Ted’s research overseas was used as a reference for this column and is a part of the story behind the formation of the 44th Bombardment Group at Shipdam, England.

“He is a real hero in my book,” said Johnson, who also is vice president of the Zephyrhills Military Museum in East Pasco County.

Rossman’s story is so special, Johnson said, it should be preserved and shared.

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 December 16, 2020

Fence law changed Florida’s cattle industry

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Florida passed a fence law in 1949 — the same year Steve Melton was born.

“This is amazing to me that within my lifetime we have gone from open range cattle to what you see today,” Melton said, during a recent meeting of the Pasco County Historical Society in Dade City.

This cow, in northeastern Pasco County, stands in a pasture behind a barbed wire fence. Florida was the last state to pass a fence law, to keep cattle penned into properties. (File)

“When you drive in the morning and see the green pastures, and the housing developments, you have to remember it was open range not that long ago,” recalled Melton, whose family has farming and ranching operations on the northeastern edge of Pasco County.

How ranchers transformed the state’s agriculture open ranges and woods to improved pastures was the topic of Melton’s talk before an audience of roughly 50 people.

Those gathered had waited six months to hear from the cattle rancher and cowboy poet because of concerns about gatherings during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

The state’s fence law — Chapter 588 of the Florida Statutes — makes it possible for approximately 19,000 livestock farms to coexist with the state’s rapid population and commercial growth.

Complaints about traffic accidents with stray cattle had finally convinced more and more ranchers to permanently fence in their herds.

But, the state’s history with cattle began about 500 years before that.

Melton offered a historical glimpse of the role cattle has played in Florida, since explorer Ponce de Leon brought them to the New World, in 1521.

During the Civil War, Florida became the main supplier of beef to the Confederate army.

But, the cattle industry didn’t enter its golden age until the period of Reconstruction, when a thriving trade opened with Cuba.

Turpentine enterprises were abundant in Pasco County during the early 1900s. After the turpentine was removed, turpentine companies would abandon the properties or sell the land for $2 an acre or less, making it possible for ranchers and others to acquire large land holdings. (Courtesy of Jeff Cannon)

Ranchers bred and raised “cracker cattle” to graze on wire grass, and native plants in pinewoods and wet weather ponds.

That began to change in the 1800s.

“Not many know this, but turpentine was the state’s largest industry at that time,” Melton said.

Turpentine was manufactured from pine sap taken from old-growth trees. It was used for the so-called naval store industry for all products derived from pine resin, such as soap, paint, varnish, shoe polish, lubricants, linoleum, and roofing materials.

The distillation process left the trees mostly barren.

Then, Melton said, the turpentine companies would either walk away or sell their land for less than $2 an acre.

Low land prices create opportunity
“Cattlemen and others with some money started to buy huge tracts of land,” Melton said.

Landowners expanded their holdings, including the Barthle Brothers Ranch and the Krusen Land and Timber Company in East Pasco, the Wiregrass Ranch in Central Pasco, and the Starkey Ranch in West Pasco County.

“The main thing that changed our agriculture at this point was watermelons,” Melton explains.

Watermelon growers headed to the big ranchers and made deals to clear the land.

Since they needed fresh ground when planting, this meant that each year the trees would be pushed and cleared to plant a new crop of watermelon.

Hundreds of boxcars loaded with watermelons were shipped out from the railroad sidings in Trilby by local growers over 60 years ago. The Trilby depot can still be seen on the grounds of the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village north of Dade City. (Courtesy of Scott Black)

“They had a unique way of clearing the land,” Melton told his audience.

“They would take a couple of D8 Caterpillar bulldozers and tie a ship anchor chain between them, and drag this back and forth across the field to clear scrub and light timber,” Melton said.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, watermelon growers found an early market up north for shipping product for the Memorial Day family picnics.

The ranchers benefited because their land was cleared, for free, by the watermelon growers.

After the watermelon harvests, alyceclover was planted first as a seed crop.

When planting Baha as an improved pasture grass, and with genetics greatly improving the size and quality of beef, ranchers could average one calf per 13 acres instead of one calve per 15 acres.

“The beef industry in Florida completely changed,” Melton observed.

“Most all ranchers run a cow-calf operation. Meaning they keep the momma cow and sell the calves for beef.”

Steve Melton is an agricultural businessman, rancher, farmer, poet, and owner of one of the largest privately held farm machinery museums in Florida. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

Increased calf production necessitated economies in savings with giant feed lots operating in Texas, Kansas, Arizona and New Mexico.

“The calves are fed to be 2-year-old, 100-pound steers or heifers, and then sold to a packer,” Melton explains.

Only four or five packing houses in the United States are still cost-effective with the feed lots out west.

“Cattle ranching, which had once been a family enterprise utilizing the open-range, became a capital-intensive agribusiness by the 1980s,” Melton concluded.

Florida was the last state to pass a fence law.

Dade City’s William M. Larkin, a long-time cattle rancher and prominent lawyer, drafted the fence law that was adopted by the Florida Legislature.

Larkin wound up fencing about 15,000 acres of his ranch with woven wire, purchased from Sears, Roebuck and Company.

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 November 18, 2020

The Dade City Banner chronicled local news

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By the time Katharine Graham became publisher of the Washington Post in 1963, Margaret Bazzell had already been the publisher for The Dade City Banner for 20 years.

Both women became owners of their family owned newspapers upon the deaths of their husbands.

Succeeding in a male-dominated industry, Graham was the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. Her paper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

The National Guard was brought in to protect dozens of homes and businesses damaged by a tornado, as reported by The Dade City Banner on April 2, 1959. (Courtesy of the University of Florida Digital Collections)

Bazzell became the first female publisher in Pasco County during World War II. Her husband died when he was just 42.

The newspaper reported the death under the headline — “H. S. Bazzell died suddenly Sunday p.m.,” spelled out in all capital letters.

An account, published Jan. 22, 1943, said in part: “When an employee is called upon to chronicle the passing of his employer and intimate friend it borders on the impossible.”

Prior to the Banner’s first publication on July 25, 1913, it chose a name that was briefly considered for Pasco County in 1887.

Volume 1, number 1 of the Banner was a “well-edited and well-appearing paper,” observed its first editor John Tippen.

Published on the Banner’s front page was a picture of “the beautiful Edwinola Hotel.” It was completed the previous year at a cost of about $50,000.

The structure was described this way in the Banner: “It is a fire-proof concrete building of three stories, containing 32 guest rooms, all of which are located on the second and third floors, the first floor being used for office, parlor and a dining room.”

In a notice to its readers and advertisers in 1915, the Banner promised “to conduct a clean, wholesome newspaper, which will give in every instance a fair deal to all.”

For much of the Banner’s history, that public pledge was followed by Margaret Bazzell.

During her time as owner and publisher until 1968, Margaret Bazzell would see her son, Harley S. Bazzell Jr., become editor.

She also hired her daughter-in-law Roszlyn “Ro” Bazzell (who died earlier this year); Harold Taylor, as typesetter; and William R. Branas, as advertising manager.

Calling itself “Pasco County’s Leading Newspaper,” the Banner became a daily and would eventually cover all of East and Central Pasco County, including the towns of Blanton, Dade City, Land O’ Lakes, Richland, Ridge Manor, San Antonio, Trilby, Gator (Wesley Chapel) and Zephyrhills.

“We lived within walking distance of our jobs,” former reporter Nell Moody Woodcock recalls on the Pasco County history website Fivay.org.

This old post card shows the offices of The Dade City Banner sometime in the early 1920s. The newspaper’s staff is pictured on the front steps, while a company car is shown on the right. (Courtesy of David Ward)

Keeping a finger on the pulse on Pasco
“The Banner was the newspaper of record for legal advertisements. Hard news was generated at the Pasco County Courthouse or city hall,” Woodcock recalls.

It was convenient that the Coleman and Ferguson Funeral Home was located on the opposite side of Seventh Street from the Banner.

“Their ambulances were called to emergencies, and a check with the front office would reveal the location and severity of the incident,” explains Woodcock, who grew up in Lacoochee and later retired as a staff reporter with The Tampa Tribune.

Readers especially enjoyed the Society Page by editor Catherine H. McIntosh. This section of the Banner was filled with articles about children’s birthday parties, families entertaining out-of-town guests, and weddings that were not complete without full descriptions of the dresses worn by the brides.

Typical was the following published on June 30, 1952: “Given in marriage by her father, the bride (Miss Vivian Bailey) wore a gown of candlelight satin with the full skirt terminating in a cathedral train. An overskirt of princess lace was a feature of the gown, which was fashioned with a basque bodice, with jewel neckline and long fitted sleeves with points over the hands. Her fingertip veil of illusion fell from a Queen of Scots cap, caught with orange blossoms, and appliqued with princess lace. She carried a shower bouquet of lilies of the valley and stephanotis, centered with a white orchid.”

With no door-to-door delivery, “subscribers got the paper in the mail (and) those who were in the military could learn all about what was happening back home by having the paper mailed to them,” according to the Fivay.org website.

That included local sports coverage by Gerald Newton, who was hired by the Banner in 1965 while still a 23-year-old student at Southeastern Bible College in Lakeland.

“I was once warned about being too wordy with some of my articles,” Newton posted on his Facebook page for Feb. 23, 2020.

This undated photograph shows the new Edwinola Hotel near downtown Dade City. Opening on March 8, 1912, it made front page news published in the first edition of The Dade City Banner on July 25, 1913. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

The 1979 Dade City Little League state championship and the 1992 Pasco Pirate state title were covered during his 47-year career that spanned three newspapers following the Banner, as well as sports director for radio station WDCF in Dade City, and as a coach and teacher for Pasco County Schools.

Nearly 3,000 issues of The Dade City Banner are part of the digital collections on file at the University of Florida.

Preserving the newspaper began with efforts by the Pasco County Genealogy Society in 2000.

“They thought it would be a good idea to start indexing the births, deaths and marriages in The Dade City Banner,” explains Glen Thompson, a member of the Friends of the Hugh Embry Library in Dade City.

Following seven years of work on issues printed from 1913 to 1923, these copies were sent to the University of Florida. Also shipped out were Banners found in a dumpster, and others stored in archival boxes at city hall.

According to Angelo Liranzo, the library’s manager, copies of The Dade City Banner were digitized from 1914 to 1971 at a cost of approximately $15,000.

While the digital files are all PDF, the original papers still survive.

They chronicle news including construction of the new Evans bulk orange juice concentrate facilities south of Dade City in 1957, and the closing of the Cummer & Sons Cypress Company in 1959.

But, the stories of generations of families are the primary history that is preserved, in part, on the pages of The Dade City Banner.

The records are not clear, but sometime between 1973 and 1974, The Dade City Banner changed its name to The Pasco News under new management.

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 October 07, 2020

This museum keeps making a history of its own

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In the wee hours of June 2 — around 1:35 a.m., to be exact — the first of two sections of a log cabin were transported down U.S. 301, en route to a new home on the grounds of The Pioneer Florida Museum and Village.

The structure joins a collection of more than a dozen buildings situated on the 20-acre site, north of Dade City.

Together, they help tell the story of the men, women and children who have made a life in Florida — through the buildings where they went to school, or worshiped, where they shopped, worked and met for social gatherings.

Descendants of the Overstreet family helped raise the money to cover the cost of moving this dwelling to the grounds of the Pioneer Florida Museum, for restoration. The structure was moved on Sept. 27, 1978. Originally, the building was situated on the site now occupied by Rodney B. Cox Elementary School in Dade City. The Overstreet House is typical of the mid-1860s time period. It was built with native heart pine and has a dogtrot connecting it to the kitchen. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The collections include the Enterprise Baptist Church, originally built in 1878, then rebuilt in 1903.

There’s also the Old Lacoochee Schoolhouse, built around 1926.

Other structures on the property include the 1896 Trilby depot, the 1927 C.C. Smith General Store and Overstreet House, an 1864 farmhouse.

The museum’s most ambitious relocation project happened in 1993, when it moved buildings from The Green Swamp, which is managed by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

“We moved an old hunting lodge and a bunkhouse 40 miles from The Green Swamp,” recalled Susan Sumner Shelton, a long-time museum board member.

The cypress structures originally were owned by the Cummer Sons Cypress Company, which operated the South’s largest sawmill and box factory in Lacoochee until 1958.

“It took state historic grants to move and restore those buildings,” Shelton said.

The log cabin, which is the most recent structure moved to the grounds, is perhaps the oldest one in Pasco County.

It was moved from Lacoochee.

The Pioneer Florida Museum and Village added a little new history of its own when a log cabin was moved, in sections, to the museum grounds.

Elaine Black Wilson, who donated her grandfather’s log cabin to the museum, marveled at the how well the cabin has stood up, over time.

“I was just amazed that it was not damaged by rotten wood after all these years,” she said.

Besides its connection to the past, the building also has a connection to the present. It belonged to Dade City Commissioner Scott Black’s grandfather. The commissioner lived in the house with his grandmother for several months, in the early 1970s.

George E.W. and Mamie Black purchased the cabin from the Mann family in the late 1950s, after George retired from the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The house was passed onto their son, Walt Black, and later his daughter, Elaine.

Before the cabin was moved to the museum grounds, volunteers worked to do some deconstruction work — removing additions that had been added to the original structure.

The first historically significant building to be moved to the museum grounds was the Old Lacoochee Schoolhouse circa 1926. Electric lights were furnished in the style of the Florida one-room schools prevalent in the early 20th century.

The house also had to be divided in two, to fit on the trailers used in the move.

Like the building relocations in 1993, this one was complicated.

It was done at night, and had to avoid electric power lines and other utility lines.

A permit was required to cross the railroad tracks facing the museum.

Various sources provided funding for the move.

“We received $25,000 in tourist development funds secured by Pasco County Commissioner Ron Oakley, and $10,000 from the Joseph and Rose Herrmann Charitable Foundation,” said Stephanie Black, the museum’s director.

“Scott Black secured $5,000 from CSX Transportation,” added Black, who is no relation to city commissioner Black.

Steve Melton, who coordinated the log cabin’s relocation, said when the restoration is finished, museum visitors will see a pioneer home hand-hewed from whole trees to construct 30-foot log beams and floors that were squared by an axe.

“It was made from old growth cypress trees,” Melton explains, “and it really must be viewed to appreciate one of the best examples of Florida Cracker-style architecture I have ever seen in my life.”

Dozens of historic photographs and artifacts are on display in these buildings relocated from the Green Swamp, to serve as a history center for the museum.

Pioneer Florida Museum and Village features a collection of historic structures. In non-COVID times, it also is a popular venue for public and private events and school field trips.
Where: 15602 Pioneer Museum Road (1 mile north of Dade City)
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to  5 p.m. Please arrive by 3:30 p.m., to tour the museum. Closed on Sunday, Monday and most holidays.
Cost: Adult, $10; Senior, $8; Student (including college with ID), $5; Children under 5, no charge
The museum is open, but has been hit hard by COVID-19. Concerns about potential spread of the virus has canceled many special fundraising events, weddings, family reunion and student field trips.
Info: For more about the museum, or if you would like to help it through these challenging times, call (352) 567-0262, or visit PioneerFloridaMuseum.org.

A brief history of the museum
In 1961, a prominent citizen of San Antonio donated 37 vehicles and tools to the Pasco County Fair Association, prompting the formation of the Pioneer Florida Museum Association, with 87 charter members.
Those charter members made it clear they wanted the museum “…to show that the men and women who were here before us, struggled, made do, and sometimes won…”
Initially located in a small building at the Pasco County Fairgrounds, the museum now sits on land donated by prominent attorney and rancher, William Larkin, and his wife, Emily.

Published July 22, 2020

The Enterprise Baptist Church was moved to the museum in 1977. The church originally was built in 1878, and was rebuilt in 1903 by local citizens, at a cost of $500.

Pasco courthouse has colorful history

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If you visit downtown Dade City, it’s nearly impossible not to notice the stately Historic Pasco County Courthouse.

It sits in the middle of a town square, at Seventh Street and Meridian Avenue.

Originally constructed in 1909, and restored in a $2.3 million renovation in 1998, the courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Sept. 20, 2006.

Pictured in 1909, Pasco County’s historic courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic places on Sept. 20, 2006. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

With its Classical Revival style of architecture, the building at 37918 Meridian Ave., has a colorful history of its own.

For instance, there was confusion for years over who designed the red brick building, according to various accounts published in The Tampa Tribune.

Altemus Roberts was credited in local history books for designing the courthouse, but that was put into question after Gregory Herrmann, originally from East Pasco, moved to Texas and spotted a courthouse in Mason, Texas, which looked very much like the one in Dade City, the Tribune reported.

The East Pasco man learned that an architect named Edward Columbus (E.C.) Hosford had designed the Texas courthouse. He sent that information, along with a photograph, to his brother, Eddie, who was deeply involved in local history circles.

Eddie dug into old Pasco County records to find out that, indeed, the building people had believed to be designed by Roberts, actually was designed by Hosford.

Hosford’s involvement was documented on April 17, 1909 in a story by the Tampa Morning Tribune.

Spearheaded by Pasco County Commissioner Sylvia Young, a four-year restoration totaling $2.3 million included the demolition of five additions to the historic courthouse. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

In that account, the newspaper reported the Pasco County Commission had approved the architectural plans submitted by Hosford, and commissioners agreed to erect “a courthouse that will be a credit to any county.”

The board also adopted a resolution to build the new courthouse for less than $35,000. A contract was awarded that May to Mutual Construction Company of Louisville, Kentucky, in the amount of $34,860. Hosford also received $871.50 for his plans and specifications.

The confusion over Roberts’ role on the courthouse may be partially due to the fact that he did design other buildings in downtown Dade City, and was the construction superintendent on the courthouse project, Tribune reports said.

While the courthouse, with its neoclassical dome and clock tower, is impressive — the design was not exactly unique.

Hosford used a similar design for three courthouses in Georgia and two in Texas.

The courthouse in Mason, Texas, was built for $39,786. It featured front porticos and Doric columns, and was built the same year as the courthouse in Dade City.

Stanley Burnside checks the time inside the clock tower. His father, Archie Burnside, made the first payment for the new courthouse in the amount of $6,360 in 1910. Both father and son served as the Pasco County Clerk of the Circuit Court for a combined total of 17 terms. (Courtesy of Fivay.org)

Hosford designed seven courthouses in Florida and usually worked with the Mutual Construction Company to build them.

The courthouse in Polk County, which opened in 1909, also is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

With completion of the new courthouse in Dade City, the county board sold the former two-story wooden courthouse structure at public auction for $500.

Part of the deal called for removing the building from courthouse grounds within 60 days, said Scott Black, a local historian who also sits on the Dade City Commission.

A bandstand was built at the northeast corner of the courthouse yard in 1925, after famed composer and conductor John Philip Sousa visited Dade City.

Sousa never returned, and the bandstand was repurposed as a World War II Memorial. The dedication for that memorial was held on Flag Day, on June 14, 1948.

The courthouse in downtown Dade City played a central role in Pasco County government for 70 years. Five additions were added to accommodate the county’s growth.

When a new courthouse opened in 1979, activities shifted, and over time, the 1909 structure fell into disrepair.

But, Pasco County Commissioner Sylvia Young championed a $2.3 million renovation, which used $1.3 million in taxpayer money and $1 million in state grants, according to Tribune reports.

The project took four years to complete, and included knocking down the additions to restore the building to its original look.

Sidewalks leading to the county’s courthouse contain the names of pioneer families of Pasco County. (Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The project was not without its controversy.

Some thought it was too extravagant, particularly when Young pushed for money to purchase period pieces to furnish the renovated building.

But, that idea prevailed. Commissioners approved a $50,000 budget, and Young searched far and wide, to accomplish the job.

The building, once again, has become a center for county activities.

Except for during this time of COVID-19, the full Pasco County Commission typically gathers twice a month on the second floor.

They meet in the same room where trials were once held and hearings conducted.

Now restored to its original grandeur, the building is a symbol of pride for the Dade City community.

Its image is part of the logo for The Greater Dade City Chamber of Commerce, and it is used as a setting for community events.

The building was rededicated in 1998, when Young was chairwoman of the county board.

And, when she stepped away from her 20-year stint on the board in 2000, she described the courthouse restoration as her “crowning glory.”

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 .

Parade celebrates Stanley Burnside’s ‘Big 100’

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There was a big drive-by parade on May 23 in Dade City, to honor Stanley Burnside on his 100th birthday.

Stanley Burnside took it all in, as he turned 100 — and the community turned out to celebrate with him — from a social distance. COVID-19 did not stop them from letting Burnside know they appreciate him. (Doug Sanders)

Those gathered were there to celebrate the century-mark of a man who served as the Pasco County Clerk & Comptroller. Both he and his father held that post. They served a combined 68 years — for a total of 17 consecutive terms.

Stanley Burnside’s life spanned a century in history ranging from Model-T Fords to the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was just 7 when he saw men lay down the bricks on 12th Street to the Dade City Grammar School, now known as Rodney B. Cox Elementary School.

In 1937, he marched with the graduates of Pasco High School.

He was in the Army Air Forces during World War II — serving in the jungles of New Guinea and in the Philippines, on the Island of Corregidor.

People lined up to wish Stanley Burnside, the former Pasco County Clerk & Comptroller, a happy 100th birthday.

He was a family man. He had three children, six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

He worked as an accountant for James Emmitt Evans, giving him a front-row view into the makings of one of the largest bulk orange juice concentrate distributors in Florida’s history.

He coached Little League, too.

Over the span of 100 years, he left a huge imprint, evidenced through 200 tributes to him, posted on Facebook.

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 June 03, 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