46 Cassia Station, on the railroad, seven miles east of Sorrento off S.R.46 Ethel City, east of State Road 433 on the south county line Cason, three miles southwest of Okahumpka on the railroad off State Road 48 Winsted, near Florida's Turnpike and State Road 25 Hawkinsville, one mile south of State Roads 42 and 44 on the St. Others in Lake County he identifies are: Conant, one mile north of Lady Lake on State Road 25 Grand Island, off State Road 44, north of Lake Eustis Old Seneca, three miles west of Eustis on State Road 439 Lovejoys Mill, on the railroad, two miles east of Sorrento off State Road 46 Wayland, on the railroad, 3 1/2 miles east of Sorrento off S.R. Francis, Sellers Lake, Summit, Bryanville, Syracuse, Churchill, Kerr City, Barronswood, Messina and Acron.
''On other sites, one can still find the handmade bricks and the old bottles of another era to remind him that he is standing on the soil of history.''Įleven of the ghost towns Warnke identifies are in the Ocala National Forest, and he reminds us that it is a federal offense to disturb the sites of those ghost towns: Kismet, St. ''Some do have the remains of clapboard structures still standing after years of forest fires and hurricanes,'' he writes. Some of the historical villages, Warnke says, may still have the proverbial hermit in residence. Whatever the reason, Florida is dotted with over 350 of these historical and little-known ghost towns that contributed so much to the progress of the state.'' ''The reasons are varied but are usually due to hard economics - a bad freeze, a railroad bypassing the town, or perhaps the local main industry closing its doors. Then Warnke asks: ''How could a whole town of homes, stores, hotels and post offices vanish so that today one is hard put to even find the spot where the settlement existed? ''They came to the promised land of Florida in the early 1800s for many reasons,'' Warnke writes, ''the consumptive for his health, the pioneer for a new home for his family, the merchant for a new start, the tycoon to enrich his holdings and the worker to lead a new life in the land of everlasting summer.''
He has written a small book on the subject that is available from him for $6. Jim Warnke, who lives in Boynton Beach, has been trudging the back roads of Florida, backpack and all, for many years. If you add those, you have 48 lost villages and towns in Lake County. Checking old maps and old histories, I came up with 32, some of which were not on Warnke's list.
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