This feature article from Gainesville Magazine is a brief history of citrus in Alachua County.

Oranges used to be the ultimate stocking stuffer. Florida growers stayed busy shipping citrus to northern climes during the holiday season, offering a decadent taste of tropical Florida paradise on Christmas morning.

The orange has become a symbol of Florida, but it is not native to the Sunshine State. Oranges were first enjoyed by Malaysians 20 million years ago. Citrus was later brought to mainland China before it eventually reached Japan, Arabia, Africa, Greece, Rome, India and Spain.

Christopher Columbus brought Seville (sour orange) seeds and several other types of citrus on his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere in 1493, and Spanish explorers introduced the orange to Florida sometime between the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513 and the establishment of St. Augustine in 1565. By the century’s end, Spanish ships had brought millions of seeds to Florida. A century later, Florida was exporting oranges back to Spain.

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The Timucuans helped transfer citrus seeds across the Sunshine State, both deliberately and casually by eating citrus and spitting out the seeds as they traveled. When William Bartram visited Alachua and Marion Counties in 1774, he reported finding large stands of wild orange trees, including at Paynes Prairie. Bartram reported that orange trees grew like weeds in Florida. He described a campsite on the St. Johns River as being “one entire orange grove, with a few live oaks, magnolias and palms.”

Along with cotton, citrus was among the most important cash crops in east Florida in the early 1800s. By the 1830s, millions of oranges were shipped north from St. Augustine, and the city “had the appearance of one vast orange grove from end to end,” according to a 1976 Gainesville Sun article by John Liles.

In Alachua County, small towns near Paynes Prairie and Orange Lake became important citrus centers. Melrose, Micanopy and Cross Creek prospered in the 19th century. By the end of the century, Micanopy was one of the wealthiest towns in Florida. One Micanopy man was said to own 100,000 orange trees. Two railroads were needed to ship citrus from Micanopy to northern markets, and the town had two hotels and a variety of shops. In addition to the rail lines, growers also shipped oranges across Paynes Prairie and other local waterways by boat.

In the early 1880s, nearby Cross Creek had a packing house and dock where oranges were shipped to Boardman. The Axline House (also known as the Brice/Williams House), a Folk Victorian with decorative detailing applied to a vernacular house, still stands as a testament to the economic impact of citrus in Alachua County.

Located near the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park in unincorporated Cross Creek, the house is currently owned by local artist and former Alachua County Commissioner Kate Barnes.

According to Murray Laurie’s successful 2015 application to add the house to the National Register of Historic Places, Jasper Axline built the house in approximately 1885 and purchased several additional parcels where he established citrus groves. A small shed the Brice family later used as a fruit stand still remains. The family used to sell bags of citrus from their grove to passing motorists on County Road 325.

In the winter of 1894-95, the “great freeze” struck Alachua County, which was once the top producer of citrus in the state. In late December 1894, freezing temperatures spanned the state from the Panhandle to Key West, where there was frost on the ground. Temperatures dipped to 14 degrees in Gainesville, and young trees were killed to the ground. The December freeze was followed by another cold wave in February 1895. This three-day freeze destroyed more crops than any other freeze in the history of the state.

Trees that lost their leaves in the December freeze sent out new shoots, and sap flowed to the damaged portions of the trees. Many trees that survived the December freeze were killed to the ground in February. Commercial citrus in north Florida was largely wiped out. Almost all of the oranges that were shipped to market the next year came from south Florida, and almost all north Florida vegetables were killed as well.

Some optimistic Alachua Countians replanted citrus. Then, in February 1899, another deadly freeze destroyed the citrus industry in the northern and north central portion of the state, except in a handful of localities. In Tallahassee, the thermometer dipped to -2. Gainesville experienced a low of 6 degrees.

“A snowstorm fell upon us,” Augusta Steele Matheson wrote in her diary on Feb. 13, 1899. Although she described the snow as a “beautiful and unusual sight in this climate,” the incident marked the end of the orange boom in Alachua County, where hundreds of orange groves could once be found. Alachua County oranges used to be considered second only to Indian River fruit. And in the 1880s, a grove north of Waldo was said to be home to the largest orange tree in the state. The tree was 37 feet tall, had a 9-foot circumference and produced several thousand oranges each year before it met its demise during the freezes of the 1890s. The 1899 freeze was reported to have killed almost every orange tree in the county to the ground.

After the freeze of 1899, most growers moved further south. One of the only seemingly safe spots for citrus in the area was Orange Lake, which had been the southernmost location of citrus when it was first introduced to Florida in the 16th century. During Florida’s territorial days, the lake was thick with wild citrus trees, hence the name Orange Lake. There were once more wild orange trees growing around Orange Lake than in all of Florida, according to James A. Harris, who established the town of Citra on the lake’s southern shore. After the disastrous freezes of the 1890s, Harris, dubbed the “Citrus King of Florida,” abandoned his groves and switched his attention to phosphates.

Today, more than a century after the big freezes of the 1890s led citrus growers to try their luck further south, many Alachua County grocery stores have resorted to carrying oranges and orange juice made from fruit shipped from as far away as California, Brazil, Peru and even South Africa.

Here in Gainesville, researchers with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) are working against the clock to save the orange from the greatest threat to its existence in the 21st century: citrus greening. But that is another story. For now, let us raise a glass of imported orange juice and toast the glory days of Alachua County’s orange boom.