Ormond Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. The population was 36,301 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 37,929. Ormond Beach is the northern neighbor of Daytona Beach and is home to Tomoka State Park.
History
Ormond Beach was once within the domain of the Timucuan Indians. Their local fortified village was called Nocoroco, believed to have been located at the site of Tomoka State Park. But war and disease would decimate the tribe. The city is named for James Ormond I, an Anglo-Irish-Scotch sea captain commissioned by King Ferdinand VII of Spain to bring Franciscan settlers to this part of Florida. Ormond had served Britain and Spain in the Napoleonic Wars as a ship captain, and was rewarded for his services to Spain by King Ferdinand VII. Ormond later worked for the Scottish Indian trade company of Panton, Leslie & Company, and his armed brig was called the Somerset . In 1821, Florida was acquired from Spain by the United States, but hostilities during the Second Seminole War delayed settlement until after 1842. In 1875, the city was founded as New Britain by inhabitants from New Britain, Connecticut, but would be incorporated in 1880 as Ormond for its early plantation owner.
Florida experienced a boom in tourism after the Civil War. With its hard, white beach, Ormond became popular for the wealthy seeking relief from northern winters. The St. Johns & Halifax Railroad arrived in 1886, and the first bridge across the Halifax River was created in 1887. John Anderson and James Downing Price opened the Ormond Hotel on January 1, 1888. Henry Flagler bought the hotel in 1890 and expanded it to accommodate 600 guests. It would be one in a series of Gilded Age hotels catering to passengers aboard his Florida East Coast Railway, which had purchased the St. Johns & Halifax Railroad. Once a well-known landmark which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the hotel was razed in 1992.
One of Flagler's guests at the Ormond Hotel was his former business partner at the Standard Oil Company. John D. Rockefeller arrived in 1914, and after four seasons at the hotel bought an estate called The Casements. It would be Rockefeller's winter home during the latter part of his life. Sold by his heirs in 1939, it was purchased by the city in 1973, and now serves as its cultural center. It is the community's best-known historical structure. Beginning in 1902, some of the first automobile races were held on the compacted sand from Ormond south to Daytona Beach. Pioneers in the industry, including Ransom Olds and Alexander Winton, tested their inventions. The American Automobile Association brought timing equipment in 1903, and the area acquired the nickname "The Birthplace of Speed." Lee Bible in the record-breaking, but fatal, White Triplex was less fortunate. Driving on the beach is still permitted on some stretches. The city would be renamed Ormond Beach in 1949.
History of the Ormond Loop and Trail
The communities surrounding The Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail have a long, rich history that begins approximately 20,000 years ago during the last Glacial Period and is closely linked to three bodies of water - the Atlantic Ocean, the Halifax River and the Tomoka River. The Halifax River is actually an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that thrusts northward from Ponce de Leon Inlet to the south and splits the land into two sections.
The Tomoka Basin, the source of the Halifax River, is located about twenty-three miles north of Ponce de Leon Inlet and is fed from the southwest by the Tomoka River, a fresh water river. The surrounding lands are located on the Silver Bluff Terrace - an ancient ocean bottom. Giant ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons, and prehistoric horses once roamed the forests surrounding these waters. On the east side of the Halifax River is a narrow peninsula approximately a mile wide.
The northern-most portion of the peninsula in Volusia County is known as Ormond-By-The-Sea. Following the peninsula south from the Flagler County line for about 8 miles brings us to the City of Ormond Beach, which is separated by the Halifax River into beachside and mainland segments. The northern mainland side of The Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail corridor sits in unincorporated Volusia County. Descendants of primitive Asiatics, who came to be known as Indians, migrated to Florida approximately twelve thousand years ago. They came to hunt the mammoths, musk oxen and caribou.
These early inhabitants hunted and fished along the Halifax and Tomoka Rivers, leaving behind mounds filled with broken pottery, arrowheads, and shellfish remains. One of these mounds is located on Mound Ave.The earliest inhabitants of the area that we have knowledge of are the Timucuan Indians who lived along the banks of the Halifax and Tomoka Rivers during the early 1500s. Their primary settlement was called Nocoroco and is thought to be located in what now is Tomoka State Park, which faces the Tomoka Basin and welcomes visitors through its entrance on North Beach Street, the western limb of the Ormond Scenic Loop & Trail.
Nocoroco was mentioned in a 1569 memorial to the king of Spain by Captain Antonio de Prado who noted that the village was situated between two rivers (now known as Tomoka and Halifax). Princess Issena of the Timucuan Indian Tribe married French Huguenot nobleman Ernst D'Erlach in 1566. An engraved rock marks the site near the primitive church on the northwest corner of the Granada Bridge. In 1605, Spanish explorer Alvaro Mexia mapped the area.
Prehistoric shell middens are located along John Anderson Drive containing the remains of oysters harvested by these peoples from the river and tiny coquina clams gathered from the ocean side. Bones of shark, sea turtle and manatee are also found in these significant archeological sites. Because of this bounty of river and sea, the natives who lived in villages once located along the Halifax and Tomoka Rivers never practiced agriculture until the arrival of the Spanish.
The Timucuan villages of Cacaroy and Cicale are believed to have been located along the banks of the Halifax River in present day Ormond-By-The-Sea. The Cacaroy settlement is believed to have been located just south of Bicentennial Park, with the Cicale settlement approximately one mile further south along the banks of the river. The Timucuans disappeared entirely by the early 1800s, perhaps decimated by diseases brought by European settlers. At the end of the Seven Years War in Europe, Spain ceded Florida to the British in exchange for Cuba.
Britain gave out many land grants to settlers, including 20,000 acres to Richard Oswald in 1766. Mount Oswald became a rice and indigo plantation, encompassing what is now Tomoka State Park. There are eleven known plantation sites within the Tomoka State Park area all of which can be seen and are accessible from the Ormond Scenic Loop & Trail. During the survey of these land grants, the Halifax River received its name in honor of Lord Halifax.
Later, Florida reverted to Spain and Mount Oswald and other early plantations fell into ruins. Spanish land grants of the early 1800s brought a new wave of settlers from the Bahamas. Spain remained in possession of Florida from 1783 until 1821, when it became a United States territory. Some of the earliest settlers to the area included James and George Anderson, who came to Ormond with a Spanish land grant and took over what had been Mount Oswald. Loop road John Anderson Drive is named after their family. Captain James Ormond received a 2,000-acre land grant that he called Damietta Plantation.
James Ormond II died in 1829 and is buried in Ormond Tomb Park located on Old Dixie Highway. A landmark of the second Spanish period is located in the vicinity of Pine Tree Drive. What was once the Addison Land Grant was later sold in part to the McCrae brothers. This landmark, known as the McCrae Plantation Ruins and Addison Blockhouse, are important examples of 19th century plantation architecture. This plantation, like many in the area, was destroyed during the Second Seminole War. The effective reprisals of the Seminole Indians in 1835-36 laid waste to the plantation economy in this part of the state, from which it never recovered. During the course of the next fifty years, these lands lay dormant allowing nature to take its course.
In the 1870s, a new wave of settlers arrived, including a group employed by the Corbin Lock Company of New Britain, Connecticut, who named the area New Britain. In 1876 Chauncey A. Bacon, an architect and Civil War veteran from New Britain, Connecticut, purchased 172 acres in present day Ormond-By-The-Sea and named it the Number Nine Plantation. Mrs. Bacon became the first teacher in the colony of New Britain, present day Ormond Beach.
In her book Ormond-On-The-Halifax, Alice Strickland describes the site: "The land was covered with a dense, tangled forest of palmettos, scrub oaks, and pine trees which Bacon cleared out with axe and grub hoe. The Bacon's first home was a palmetto cabin, but later Bacon built a small, two story house with a large coquina rock fireplace on top of the Indian shell mound. Eventually this house became the 'jelly house' where Jennie Bacon, and their son, Earl, made delicious jams, jellies, and preserves that were sold on the property and also shipped to all parts of the country."
The Bacons constructed a third home, which still stands on John Anderson Drive, from salvaged mahogany logs that
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