Orlando The Past And The Present

Orlando, located in central Florida, is best known as the home of Disney World. Like much of the rest of Florida, Orlando is a popular tourist destination, except people come more for the theme parks than the beaches. Its famed theme parks include Sea World, Universal Studios and of course Disney World. With one of the nation’s largest conference centers and numerous golf courses, Orlando is a popular host for business conferences and golf retreats.

Historically, Orlando was grounds for the Seminole Wars between the Americans and the Native American tribe Seminole. In 1838, the US army built Fort Gatlin outside the city to protect against attacks from Indians. A community formed around the Fort and the area was initially named Jernigan, after the Jernigan family who established the first permanent inhabitants of the area by building a post office. The earliest settlers earned their living by cattle ranching, but Orlando didn’t truly become habited until after the Seminole wars. The city gets its name from a soldier and plantation owner named Orlando Reeves. The place where settlers saw that he marked his named on a tree (and arguably was laid to rest) is the area we now know as Orlando. The town was finally incorporated in 1875, at which point there were only 85 residents. The city began making its money from cotton, citrus and cattle. Cattle ranches grew across Florida to meet Cuban demand for beef. After this as cotton became the new hot commodity, Orlando thrived with cotton plantations. Most of the workers eventually moved to the south, and a hurricane in 1871 destroyed most of the remaining plantations. Finally, the scorching heat of Florida made it the perfect weather for citrus crops including oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, lemons and limes. With the boom of the citrus fruit market, Orlando had much to profit from. Of course, eventually all these things declined to make way for the birth of a growing tourist city. The Disney Corporation decided to build their first Disney Park outside of California in Orlando because of its vast lands. Soon, several other theme parks were built to take advantage of the tourism coming in due to Disney World.

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