Florida Midland Railroad – Longwood Historic Society

Modern Remnants of the Florida Midland Railroad

You may notice that West Florida Avenue is slightly odd through the historic district. It is placed at a half-block increment between Jessup Ave and Magnolia Ave. There are few driveways off of it, and most homes and businesses’ backs face it instead. That’s because it was not originally a road but the right of way of the long-defunct Florida Midland Railroad.

There is a tiny alley-like companion to this called East Florida Avenue on the east side of the tracks, behind some houses’ backyards. There is a small gap, and then its effective continuation is East Magnolia past the Church of the Nazarene.

Heading west from the historic district, its old path is now Warren Avenue, as it angles southwest toward 434. The railroad then roughly followed 434’s route until Sand Lake Road.

The right-of-way from Apopka to Clarcona is used for the West Orange Trail. The right-of-way from Clarcona to Ocoee is owned by CSX and run by the Florida Central Railroad. From Ocoee to Kissimmee, the railroad is abandoned, but some elements remain.

The community of “Altamont” (not Altamonte Springs) was located at I-4 and 434. During the 1880s and 1890s, this was the Florida Midland and Orange Belt Railroads intersection. Today, the Seminole-Wekiva Trail (Orange Belt Railroad) and Highway 434 (Florida Midland Railroad) crossing marked this.

History of the Railroad

The Florida Midland Railway Company was first incorporated on March 9, 1883, but it failed to get sufficient funding. Edward Warren Henck, S. M. Breuster, Carl Cushing, A. Menser, C. E. Munson, Edward Page, Charles W. Morris, Cyrus Carpenter re-incorporated it in February 10, 1885.

The original plan was to run from the Indian River on the east coast to St. Petersburg on the west coast. However, the plans changed when the Sanford and Indian River Railroad (SIRR) refused to let them cross their line. The SIRR had already connected Sanford to Lake Charm but never made it further east.

Regardless, the Florida Midland was forced to stop just shy of Lake Jessup (present-day Winter Springs) without the right of way. From there, it ran west through Longwood, past Lake Brantley, to Apopka, then swung southward and east again past Windermere and Kissimmee.

Workers completed the tracks by the end of the 1880s, while growth in the area was rapid. Many more settlers moved in, large areas were cleared, and the market grew larger with better transportation facilities. Hard-surfaced roads did not come until many years later, but the sand trails were improved. As a result, crops like corn, cotton, and sweet potatoes were abandoned in favor of more lucrative citrus groves and vegetables for the winter market of the north.

However, the Florida Midland Railway did not make it long. Insufficient business sent it into receivership from 1891 to 1896. The final blow was the Great Freeze of 1985, which broke many fortunes and sent many settlers back north.

Like many other railways in the area, the FMR was sold to the Plant System. The Atlantic Coast Line took over, and the section between Longwood and Apopka was abandoned in 1902. The Florida Midland Railroad was acquired from CSXT in 1987. FMID operates 28 miles of track on two separate branch lines that interchange with CSXT at Winter Haven, West Lake Wales, and Wildwood.

Stations listed from north to south included: