Instructions:
1....Print this file.
2....At its end, click on "rules" to see a copy of the trail rules, print it, and then click where indicated at the end of the 3-page rules and patch order form to get back to the list of Florida trails.
3....If you want a hand-drawn map showing the locations of all of the sites, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Steve Rajtar, 1614 Bimini Dr., Orlando, FL 32806.
4....Hike the trail and order whatever patches you like (optional).
WARNING - This trail may pass through one or more neighborhoods which, although full of history, may now be unsafe for individuals on foot, or which may make you feel unsafe there. Hikers have been approached by individuals who have asked for handouts or who have inquired (not always in a friendly manner) why the hikers are in their neighborhood. Drugs and other inappropriate items have been found by hikers in some neighborhoods. It is suggested that you drive the hike routes first to see if you will feel comfortable walking them and, if you don't think it's a good place for you walk, you might want to consider (1) traveling with a large group, (2) doing the route on bicycles, or (3) choosing another hike route. The degree of comfort will vary with the individual and with the time and season of the hike, so you need to make the determination using your best judgment. If you hike the trail, you accept all risks involved.
Until 1950, this city consisted of two portions, Ormond on the mainland and Ormond Beach on the barrier island. During that year, they officially resolved to collectively be known as Ormond Beach.
The oldest portion of the city hall complex was the Bank of Ormond, which failed in 1929. An annex to enlarge the city hall space was dedicated in January of 1964.
Sixteen citizens organized the Village Improvement Association on January 9, 1891. They rented a cottage in 1893 on Lincoln Ave. as their headquarters and a free public library. In 1905, they bought John Brink's building, formerly used as a furniture store, located on this lot.
In about 1912, the club sold the Brink building and a lot on New Britain Ave. donated by Margaret Howe, and with the proceeds built the present structure. In 1957, the association was renamed the Ormond Beach Woman's Club. The library organized and maintained by the club was donated to the new Ormond Beach Public Library in 1969.
This one-story masonry building was designed with a Classical Revival style by Ogden Codman, Jr. Built in 1916, it features a four-columned portico. This building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 26, 1984.
Isaac Shartle established the town's first general store near here in 1876 and soon sold it to James E. Francis. Later, he sold it and repurchased it. A long dock extended into the river in front of the store.
The first house built in the area was known as Colony House, as it was intended to house the colonists until their own homes were built. Pioneer Daniel Wilson constructed it with lumber shipped here from Jacksonville. It also served as the first post office.
In 1886, about all that remained of the Colony House was the chimney. Utley J. White was in the area building the railroad, and acquired the property and built a new home around the old chimney. He later sold it to John G. Borden of the canned milk family, who had moved to Ormond for his health.
In the early 1870s, this area was a camp for loggers. The area was being developed for the lumber industry by lumber barons Rodolphus, Elija and Oliver Swift of Massachusetts.
Rodolphus Swift who, with his brothers, was in the lumber business, had a cabin approximately here.
This three-story 9,000 square foot mansion was built in 1895 for Anne Lippincott. She later sold it to her sister, Harriet. Its style is described as Eclectic, combining elements of Queen Anne and Romanesque. It was later used as a residence and office, and after it was purchased by William Scobie in 1899, it was known as Melrose Hall. This was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
A two-story frame house located here was built of pine and cypress by a ship's carpenter. It was bought by Adelbert Ames, a major general in the Civil War and governor of Mississippi in the 1870s. He and his wife, Blanche Butler Ames, named it The Whim. It was later torn down and replaced by this one.
After that first purchase, Mrs. Ames began collecting other houses for winter residences for her children and grandchildren. These included the Stone House, The Cedars, The Ship Cabin, The Porches, Melrose Hall, Cozy Nook, Orange Lodge, The Last Straw and The Shells.
This spot got its name from its early use as a storage area, where live oak was stacked awaiting its loading on ships for export. Tomoka Rd. (now called SR 40) was a logging road over which felled trees were brought from the interior.
This mound was preserved through the efforts of local citizens in 1982. Estimates place the number of remaining skeletons in the mound at 125, most placed there after 800 A.D.
A charnel house was located here to store bodies prior to burial. Such a structure was used by the St. Johns period Indians for removal of the dead's flesh and drying of the bones. Bundles of bones were then buried in the mound during special ceremonies.
Chester Penfield donated land to the Episcopal congregation for the construction of a church and the establishment of a cemetery at this intersection. Although there were a few burials here, no building was erected. Later, the city bought the land for unpaid taxes.
Anderson and Price built Ormond's first golf course here, running parallel to the west side of the railroad tracks.
The settlement of Tomoka, located about two miles to the west of here, predated Ormond Beach and for a time was the largest in the eastern portion of Volusia County. In 1877, a post office was established there with John Wilen as its first postmaster.
The nearby Groover Creek Graveyard, named after the Groover family, contains the graves of members of the Newburn, Harper, and Priest families.
The American Legion Building formerly sat on this corner. In November of 1960, the Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce moved here from its former home elsewhere on Granada Blvd.
In a house at this intersection in 1879, a school was established with Florence Corpe as the teacher. Previously, Mrs. Chauncy Bacon taught classes in a small cabin on W. Granada Ave.
William G. McNary, E.M. Penfield and Daniel Wilson visited this area in 1873, and returned the following year to become its first permanent settlers. McNary built this home shortly after, just before the identical Dix House to the north. It had open porches across the front of the upper story, which has been removed, and the lower story, which has been enclosed. The original McNary land extended from Dix Ave. to Hernandez Ave. His orange grove extended west of Yonge St. to Nova Rd.
McNary and his son, Charles, were cabintetmakers for the Corbin Lock Company of New Britain, Connecticut, which in 1874-75 purchased the Yonge Grant and named it New Britain. It was to be a health center for its employees threatened with tuberculosis.
The first city council meeting was held in the McNary house on May 8, 1880.
This home was built in the early 1870s and had open porches across the front of both stories. It was the residence of Eliza and Ruth Dix. While construction was ongoing, Eliza became ill and lost her savings. Other settlers volunteered their labor to complete the house.
The second floor was not divided into bedrooms, and was called Dix Hall. It was used for church services, political meetings, picnics and parties. The town incorporated on April 22, 1880, in a meeting in Dix Hall and was named Ormond.
The home was purchased by Watson & Barker, who used the lower floor as a general store. Upstairs was still used for public meetings.
This is an example of the Eastlake style, named after English interior designer Charles Lock Eastlake (1833-1906). The railings, porch posts, balusters, pendants and bargeboards have a robust and massive quality. Many were probably turned on lathes, as were furniture legs of the period. There are numerous large curved brackets, scrolls and other stylized elements.
This home also has a small tea-try roof over the first story porch and a second-story shingled exterior. It was later occupied by the Union Church Youth Ministries.
Rev. E.Y. Pinkerton started holding religious meetings in this area in 1876. In 1882, it grew into the Ormond Union Church, and a sanctuary was built in 1884-85. It incorporated on September 21, 1888. A larger, modern church was built here in 1963, with the older structure incorporated into the new one.
The Ormond Beach Yacht Club was established in February of 1910. A 21 x 36 foot gray-shingled two-story club house designed by a Daytona architect was built on pilings extending over the river.
This church organized in 1879 at Groover Creek in Tomoka. It moved to what is now SR 40 west of town after the devastating freeze of 1895. That land was a gift of William T. Bennett and Walter Campbell. Rev. Henderson Bennett served as the first pastor. It was later moved here to this park.
The first bridge here across the Halifax River opened in 1887, and was financed by Stephen Van Cullen White. A later one, the Rockefeller Memorial Bridge, opened on March 2, 1954.
John Anderson and Joseph D. Price decided to go into the hotel business after the arrival of the St. Johns and Halifax River Railroad in 1886 and the construction of the bridge in 1887. They were helped by financier and friend Stephen V. White.
George Penfield, a local 14-year-old, designed the first floor of the huge, sprawling wood frame hotel, built in 1888 with 70 rooms and expanded in 1902, 1905 and 1909. It grew to 11 miles of corridors and over 380 rooms. In the early 1900s, it was the largest wooden building in the U.S.
The first managers were Dr. S.E. Churchill and his brother. Anderson and Price later managed it, even after they sold it to Henry Flagler for $112,000 in 1890. Flagler added a casino, swimming pool, dormitory, laundry, beach pavilion, river pier and three elevators. The railroad bridge was remodeled so that wealthy visitors could bring their Pullman cars to the hotel's west entrance.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the hotel struggled to stay open with a number of owners. It included a nightclub, a hotel management school, and a retirement home for missionaries and ministers. Thomas J. Wetherell and T.T. Cobb purchased it in 1957. In 1968, four-laning of Granada Ave. necessitated the elimination of 24 hotel rooms.
It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 24, 1980. On October 16, 1986, it was closed down because of fire and safety hazards. During the following spring, the furniture was auctioned off for $115,000. It was later torn down.
This home was built in the mid-1880s with horizontal palmetto log walls. It is one of several log cottages comprising John Anderson's Santa Lucia Plantation. They were frequently occupied by hotel guests.
This house dates to the mid-1880s. Palmetto logs were placed vertically and chinked or filled with plaster to make the exterior walls.
On December 5, 1896, the 500-ton schooner "Nathan F. Cobb" ran aground on a sandbar off the coast of Ormond Beach on its way from Georgia to New York. William Fagen received permission to salvage the timber and built this three-room cottage. The exterior was built of the cargo of railroad ties and the masts were cut and split into shingles. The ship's railings were used for porch decorations and the two ship's knees were placed to the sides of the front door.
Later owners have included Mary Chase, Amelia Fowler, George Wendell and Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Trimble. Many changes to the cottage have been made over the years.
Freeman Waterhouse died while attempting to rescue the crew. A large boulder was sent from his hometown of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, as a monument to his bravery. It was erected on the dunes opposite the site of the wreck, which remained visible in the surf for months.
A bronze plaque was inserted into the stone, but it was stolen by vandals in July of 1972. In November of that year, the plaque was found among the palmettos nearby. The memorial was moved to the east side of the Casa Del Mar Motel.
This three-story Classical Revial style house was built in 1913 as the winter residence of Alexander Millar Lindsay and his wife, Adelaide. He named it Rowallan after a castle of that name near his former home in Scotland. It was later owned by Englishman Leonard Martin, and then Harold and Eileen Butts, who renamed it Lisnaroe meaning "by the water" in Celtic. Mrs. Butts raised money to start the Ormond Memorial Art Gallery and Gardens and helped to create Tomoka State Park.
Joseph D. Price, a civil engineer from Covington, Kentucky, lived in a cabin deep in the woods here during the early 1870s. He named it Hammock House and shared it with Jack Thomas and Elijah Craig. To the south was Trappers Lodge, the residence of John Anderson and Samuel Dow.
John Anderson had arrived here on February 26, 1876. He and Dow bought 80 acres stretching from the ocean to the river during that year.
Price married Mary Belle Pinkerton of Covington, and moved out of his cabin. On his property, he built a small home and a packing house. Later, he built the present Hammock House.
Artist, sculptor and architect Fred Dana Marsh moved to Ormond Beach in the late 1920s. He married Mable Van Alstyne, and together they designed an Art Moderne style beach house which was located here. It contained several wall murals and was known as The Battleship because of its resemblance to a ship through its center portion. It later became the residence of the president of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Before this area was city park, a large two-story building was located here. It was a recreation building converted into a golfers' clubhouse.
A stock company controlled by Mr. Constantine of New York City built the original Coquina Hotel here in 1889 and named it for the small coquina clams found on the beach. He employed Mr. and Mrs. Seiser as his managers. In 1903, it was sold to Anderson and Price, managers of the Ormond Hotel, who renamed it the Bretton Inn. They had previously managed the Mount Pleasant and Mount Washington Hotels in the Bretton Woods area in New England. After Anderson died in 1911, James P. Vining bought the hotel.
In 1923, the Bretton Inn was torn down and Vining built a new one on the same site, named The Coquina. It was sold in 1929 to Harrington Mills. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bovard bought it in 1945, and they were still operating it when it closed in 1968. Two of the reasons for the closing were the widening of SR A1A and the decreased demand for long-term, gracious lodgings.
In 1902, vacationing James Hethweay noticed that bicycle tires left little impression on the beach, and thought it might be a good surface for auto tires. He started promoting racing on the beach. Soon, Barney Oldfield, Alexander Winston, William K. Vanderbilt and others were racing here at speeds up to 57 mph. The first official beach race took place in 1903.
Henry Flagler's East Coast Hotel Company built the Ormond Garage near here in 1903-04 for early racing cars. It was known as "America's First Gasoline Alley" and accommodated 100 cars.
A Stanley Steamer driven by Fred Marriott in 1906 was timed at 127.66 mph. In 1935, Sir Malcolm Campbell's "Bluebird" reached 276 mph.
By the late 1940s, cars were too powerful to race on the beach. In the 1950s, the Daytona International Speedway was built by Bill France. Flagler's gargage burned down on January 8, 1976.
This museum and garden was begun in December of 1946 when Malcolm Fraser offered a collection of his paintings. Henry Stockman of Chicago designed the gardens.
A memorial was placed on the front walk of the Anderson-Price Library during World War I to honor Arthur A. Helm and Harold E. Waldron, who had been killed during the war. That memorial was later moved to the southeast corner of this memorial garden.
A plaque was placed in the steps of the garden in 1977 to honor Mary Jane McSwain for her years of service on its governing board.
This church organized as a mission in 1890 and a sanctuary was built in 1892-93 on land donated by J.L. Worthy on the southwest corner of Granada Blvd. and Halifax Dr. It initially was affiliated with St. Mary's of Daytona. Its windows came from the old St. Mary's Church in South Manchester, Connecticut.
St. James separated from St. Mary's in 1908. In 1921, it moved a half block south to this site and was enlarged. Additional land to the south was donated by Mrs. George Shiras. The mission became a parish in 1955, and seven years later the present church building was erected.
Prof. and Mrs. Albert Frederick Wilson built this home in 1937 for his mother. They owned and lived at Riverway, the home whose lot adjoins the rear of this one. At one time, this was used as a guest house by John D. Rockefeller, and later as the parish house of St. James Episcopal Church. In 1952, it was acquired by Dr. George and Mary Jane McSwain.
Bosarvey, the name of the adjoining street, comes from the name of the Bostrom family and in Swedish means "home place". The Bostroms owned this as part of their homestead in the 1860s.
The land for this cemetery was donated by Andrew Bostain in about 1897. One of the people buried here is Simon J. Peabody, after whom Daytona Beach's auditorium is named.
This Mediterranean style house was built in 1904 by Junius Smith on this lot which originally stretched from the Halifax River to the Halifax Dr. Initially, there were upper and lower porches in the front, and one on the south. The basement is above the ground, with two additional stories above it.
This house was owned by John D. Rockefeller, who bought it in 1918 to house his upper staff and guests. The basement walls are made of boards from packing cases.
Rockefeller sold the home to Albert Frederick Wilson, a co-founder of the School of Journalism at Columbia. Later owners included Dr. and Mrs. Cheledon and Dr. and Mrs. Shed Roberson.
This home was built in the early 1890s with a Shingle style by Episcopal minister Rev. Harwood Huntington. In October of 1918, it was purchased by oil baron John D. Rockefeller. He used it as his winter home until he died in 1937. It may be named after the many hand-cut casement windows in the living room.
Before purchasing this home, Rockefeller spent his winters in Henry Flagler's Ormond Hotel. When he found out that he was being charged more than other guests, he left the hotel and bought these eight acres with its unassuming cottage.
In 1941, it was sold to Maud Van Woy. She enlarged it and added a building on the south side for students of her Junior College for Young Women. She sold it in 1951 to the Fellowship Foundation for $150,000. It intended to use it, along with its Ormond Hotel, for a fellowship center and room and board for transient guests. That failed in 1953.
Lavin-Johnson bought The Casements in 1959 for $100,000, and later that year sold it for $128,000 to Ormond Hotel Casements, Inc., which had already bought the Ormond Hotel. A 180-unit condominium was proposed for the property in 1971, but a seven-year fight by local citizens defeated that project.
The Casements was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1972, and was purchased by the city in 1973 for $500,000. On December 7, 1979, it was dedicated as The Ormond Beach Community Enrichment Center. In it were placed displays of Rockefeller memorabilia, plus exhibits on early local history and Boy Scouting.
A Guide to National Register Sites in Florida, (Florida Department of State 1984)
An Uncommon Guide to Florida, by Nina McGuire (Tailored Tours Publications, Inc. 1992)
Centennial History of Volusia County, Florida 1854-1954, by Ianthe Bond Hebel (College Publishing Company 1955)
The Colonization of Ormond, by Ada Green Hinkley (E.O. Painter Printing Co. 1931)
Country Roads of Florida, by Bill McMillon (County Roads Press 1994)
Florida Historical Markers & Sites, by Floyd E. Boone (Gulf Publishing Company 1988)
Florida Portrait: A Pictorial History of Florida, by Jerrell Shofner (Pineapple Press, Inc. 1990)
Florida's Fabled Inns, by Louise K. Frisbie (Imperial Publishing Company 1980)
Florida's History Through Its Places: Properties in the National Register of Historic Places, by Morton D. Winsberg (Florida State University 1988)
Florida's Past: People and Events That Shaped the State, by Gene M. Burnett (Pineapple Press 1988)
Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, (University of Florida Press 1989)
Historic Daytona Beach (a self-guided tour), The Halifax Historical Society (1992)
Historic Homes of Florida, by Laura Stewart & Susanne Hupp (Pineapple Press, Inc. 1995)
Historic Sites and Properties Survey of Ormond Beach, Florida, (Historic Property Associates, Inc. 1986)
Historical and Descriptive of Volusia County and its Towns and Settlements, (DaCosta Printing and Publishing House 1888)
History of Volusia County, Florida, by Pleasant Daniel Gold (The E.O. Painter Printing Co. 1927)
Ormond-on-the-Halifax, by Alice Strickland (Southeast Printing and Publishing Company 1980)
Ormond's Historic Homes, by Alice Strickland (Ormond Beach Historical Trust, Inc. 1992)
True Natives: The Prehistory of Volusia County, by Dana Ste. Claire (Hall Publishing Company 1992)
The Valiant Pioneers: A History of Ormond Beach, by Alice Strickland (Center Printing Co. 1963)
Click here for a copy of the trail rules.