
In its 200 years, Alachua County has seen fire and flood, sickness and prosperity. It has changed in shape and in enterprise, every shift moving the place to become what it is today.
Throughout county history, a few significant events stand out— turning points, steps forward and stunts in the county’s growth. From mining and the founding of a university to harsh freezes and Yellow Fever, the county has endured much and continued to build for 200 years.
1883 – Phosphate mining begins in Hawthorne
Phosphate mining found its way to Florida in 1880, when Dr. C.A. Simmons, the owner of a building stone quarry in Hawthorne, sent some rock to Washington, D.C. for analysis, according to the Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute. Analysts found phosphate in the stone, and Simmons launched Florida’s first attempt to mine phosphate in 1883.
By 1883, locations in Alachua, Clay, Duval, Gadsden and Wakulla counties were also reporting phosphate, and while Simmons’ endeavor in Hawthorne was short-lived, Florida hit a phosphate boom after Albertus Vogt discovered high-grade phosphate hard rock near Dunnellon in 1889.
Today, about 90% of phosphate is used for fertilizers, and the rest goes to products varying from animal feed supplements to toothpaste.
Florida’s phosphate mining industry now consists of 27 mines, nine of which are active, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Nine others have been completely reclaimed, and the rest have either shut down or not started. Most mines are in Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee and Hardee counties, on about 1.3 million acres known as “Bone Valley.”
1888 – Gainesville Yellow Fever Epidemic
Yellow Fever swept through much of Florida in spring of 1888. After the mayor of Tampa announced the disease’s presence in his city, Alachua County placed guards at every rail and road entrance to the county, authorized to put anyone off the train for lack of a health card or certificate, according to state archives.
The disease still spread, reaching Jacksonville by July, and Fernandina around August.
Though Fernandina officials denied the “Yellow Jack” disease was present, they called for state help when commerce stopped and looting began.
In response, the Gainesville Guards were sent on the Seaboard train to Waldo and Fernandina, singing “We’ll Hang the Yellow Jack to a Sour Apple Tree.” Several of those guards died of yellow fever.
The disease was declared an epidemic in Gainesville, and though the county line was sealed, many families fled before a quarantine was set up. The number of Alachua County Yellow Fever casualties is unknown, as few records were kept and many were buried in mass graves.
In 1890, comrades of Yellow Fever victims Lt. Elam A. Evans and Sgt. Mosley Fitch, erected a monument in their honor at the downtown courthouse square. The monument has since been moved to Evergreen Cemetery.
1894-1899 – The Great Freeze(s)
In the winter of 1894-1895, Florida experienced what is now known as the “Great Freeze.”
The first freeze, in December 1894, hit the citrus belt hard enough to severely damage groves, but the weather warmed up soon after and growers raised their hopes, according to the Florida Division of Historical Resources.
A few months later, in February 1895, another freeze hit, dropping temperatures by 62°degrees Fahrenheit in less than 24 hours and killing almost all of the citrus trees in the area. Lake County recorded the loss of 99% of its trees.
There were systems in place to warn growers of a coming freeze—the Melrose United Methodist Church would ring its bells to alert townspeople of fires, community meetings and possible freezes, according to historical marker data, and the US Weather Service would issue warnings in Jacksonville, carried south by train, but there were no warnings ahead of the great freeze.
Only a few years later, the Great Arctic Outbreak of February 1899 sliced through Alabama and the Gulf Coast, according to the National Weather Service.
The record low temperature for Gainesville is still the 6° degrees Fahrenheit it reached on February 13, 1899, according to UF Emergency Management. That same day, Tallahassee set the record that still stands as Florida’s coldest temperature recorded, at -2° degrees Fahrenheit
Around the time of the great freezes, settlers and investors moved the citrus belt south, and towns that depended on the industry faded away or found alternative crops.
The loss of orange groves in these freezes contributed to the end of Earleton, Kerr City, Newnansville, Rochelle and Melrose, which is still present, though unincorporated now.
1906 – UF opens
The state-funded East Florida Seminary bought Kingsbury Academy, a private school in Ocala, according to the UF faculty handbook. The seminary moved to Gainesville after the Civil War.
In 1905, the seminary combined with Florida Agricultural College, then located in Lake City, to become the University of Florida. Gainesville was chosen as the site in 1906, and classes began Sept. 26, 1906, with 102 students.
In 1905, the Buckman Act reorganized the state’s six higher education institutions into three: one for white men, one for white women, and one for African Americans. The University of Florida at Lake City merged with three other schools to become the University of the State of Florida, serving white men, according to the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ curriculum committee website.
The university began accepting some women in 1924, and became fully co-ed in 1947, with an influx of new GI Bill students after World War II. Around that time, enrollment reached about 9,000 students, with over 8,000 men and about 600 women in 1947.
In 1958, the university integrated racially.
Today, UF is one of the largest universities in the country, with 60,489 students enrolled in fall of 2023.
1928 – Alachua General Hospital opens
In 1904, with the closest modern hospital a five-hour train ride away in Jacksonville, the Alachua County community began raising funds to establish a community hospital.
The Alachua County Hospital Association leased the Odd Fellows Home in 1906. The building had been built in 1883 as a tuberculosis sanatorium, according to the Florida Historical Marker List.
The facility opened as Alachua County Hospital in 1928 with 58 beds, two operating rooms, 25 nurses and 12 physicians, according to a University of Florida press release on the occasion of a historical marker being installed.
In the next 20 years, the hospital’s needs grew with the community, as admissions increased to 3,600 patients annually. A new annex in 1943 added 116 beds, and a staff and nurses’ residence in 1944, to accommodate a growing community.
In 1949, the county changed the hospital’s name to Alachua General Hospital (AGH) and opened a new hospital on the site in 1950, with 60 more beds, a larger emergency department, six operating rooms and air conditioning.
The emergency department doubled in size during the 1970s, and by the hospital’s 50th anniversary in 1978, AGH had become a private, not-for-profit hospital.
AGH became part of SantaFe Health Care in 1983. Thirteen years later, in 1996, it was purchased by Shands HealthCare and renamed Shands AGH.
After 13 years with Shands, the hospital closed in 2009 to become the site of the University of Florida’s Florida Innovation Square.
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