Lake City, the Hotel Blanche and the entire state of Florida was a happening and changing place in the year 1910. Not only are more locals buying cars, car tours and car parties are happening more frequently. The roads are being improved in the hopes of connecting more cities together and bring more people into the state. The paper would report on who was getting together to motor over to the springs or take a caravan of vehicles around the state for vacation as well as each person buying a new vehicle each week. With the influx of car buying the city needed a place that could repair them too.
Citizen Reporter 25 Feb 1910
Messrs. C.E. Windhovel and J.A. Briere will open an automobile repair shop in the old city market building the first of March. A great many of our citizens have and are purchasing automobiles, and such a business as the one contemplated is necessary for the convenience of those owning machines. They will be local agens for the Ford. One of these machines was recently purchased by Dr. W. M. Ives. It is a beauty and is admired by every one who has seen or enjyed a ride in it. We hope that the young men who are putting in the garage will meet with every success. The shop will be equiped with the lastest machine tools.
In May of this year the Board of County Commissioners approves Ordinance 185 that lists out the regulations for automobiles.
Lake City had a song composer that created a song about the automobiles.
Citizen Reporter 02 Sept 1910
Mr. Avery G. Powell of our city has just received the proof of a song, which will be published in the near future, entitled, “I Won Her Heart With My Automobile.” Mr. Powell is author of both words and music. The song is of considerable merit, and should bring fame to the young composer.
We even had someone make their own car.
Citizen Reporter 23 Sept 1910
Mr. Frank Thompson has just completed the manufacture of an automobile, something unique and novel in its way. The engine used to operate it was taken from a motorcycle. It is a small affair but can be run and as easily managed as any machine on the market. The young man deserves much credit for building such a machine.
Also during this year of change there was a colonization company bringing northerners into the state to set-up farms in our area and other places around the state. One of those was about 20,000 acres in Columbia county called Mt. Carrie. The representatives of the company would have meetings in various towns to sell them the acres and then bring them down in groups. The went so far as to create a Columbia County Florida exhibity at the Worlds Fair in
Citizen Reporter 29 August 1910
Mr. T.A. Quinlan, Jr., general manager of the United States Colonization Company, arrived in the city this week with a party of settlers. The body of land they are handling, known as the Mt. Carrie tract, contains something over 20,000 acres, and is some of the best in this section. Although this property has been on the market only a short while, they have already sold over 3,000 acres.
Along with the newspaper postings of various different groups coming from several states such as Illinois, Minnesota and Pennsylvania the company created a major exhibity in Chicago to encourage more people to sign up. Granted, this brought in quite a few families to the area but the write-up below didn’t warn them about our hurricanes, extreme heat during the summer months and all the bugs not to mention a healthy collection of reptiles that they may have never seen in the northern climes.
Citizen Reporter 09 December 1910
Columbia’s Exhibit in Chicago
We clip the following press dispatch dated Dec. 1st relative to Columbia, an exhibit in Chicago, which is being maintained by the U.S. Colonization Co.- “Oranges in heaps and stacks form a lusciou exhibition which draws the visitors from all sides of the big Coliseum to the Columbia county exhibit in Florida at the great United States land and Irrigation exposition now on the final week of its success for 1910. Columbia county, a big map, shows to be tucked away in the extreme northeastern corner of Florida, only fifty-nine miles from Jacksonville.
The United States Colonization Company is pushing the sale of a tract of 20,000 acres, much of which they offer at the tempting price of $20 an acre. G.H.J. Haas has charge of the company’s exhibit and he expressed himself as well satisfied with the results accomplished so far at the land show. Manager Haas is giving away quantities of a phamphlet which opens the eyes of Illinois farmers because it contains a list of almost 100 fruits and vegetables which can be raised at different periods throughout the year in Northeaster Florida.
“This land is extraordinarily fertile and easy to farm,” declared Manager Haas. The tract lies close to Lake City, a place of about 7,000 people, part of the land being only three miles from town. The climate is ideal. The nights are cool in summer, the fulf on the west and the ocean on the east sending cooling breezes across the penisula.”
Till next time…
If you are enjoying our posts and would like to help us get the book published when we have finished our research
we hope you will consider contributing to our Publishing Fund.
