Orlando - History

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Orlando – a paradise on earth

Orlando is one of the developed cities of central Florida and attracts millions of tourists every year as it has umpteen top rated attractions for vacationers. Orlando is one of the major cities of Florida, USA and it is considered as the country seat of the Orange County. This is primarily the principal city of the greater Orlando. This Floridian city is well known for it’s a great variety of tourist attractions such as Walt Disney resort, Sea World resort of Universal Orlando to name a few. This city is also popular for its vast array of golf courses located here and has umpteen commercial and residential towers.   

History of Orlando

The History of this place dates back to 1500. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon, Spanish explorer visited the shore which is now known as St Augustine located in the northeastern corner of this state. This Spanish explorer and other settlers found swamps, mosquitoes as well as native tribes here.   

Three C’s of Orlando

In the early days, the 3C’s of Orlando drove commercial activity to a large scale: citrus, cotton and cattle. As Cuba’s demand for Florida’s beef enhanced, the cattle ranches simply spread all over the flatlands. These cattle rustlers began fighting. In between this, Orlando emerged as a rough and tumble city.   

In the meantime, tired settlers began to turn their focus on cotton, a substantially less menacing crop and finally Orlando became the center of flourishing cotton industry.

When the civil war in US began, workers of farmland moved away in order to choose cotton replacing armed forces. In the year of 1871, when a hurricane had roared through Orlando, it virtually destroyed this entire crop.  

As air conditioning was invented in Orlando, life here became a picnic for all the people in this sunshine state. Sandy soil, summer heat as well as erratic torrential rainfall, however, made living tough for people but provided favorable conditions for the growth of citrus crops. Tangerines, limes, grapefruit as well as orange all thrived in Orlando. By 1870, the citrus industry of this terrain grew rapidly.   

When Henry Flagler as well as, later on, Henry Plante focused upon extension of railroads in this town, orange fever accomplished its acme peak. Despite this fact, the great breeze of the year 1894-1895 badly destroyed all the citrus crops of this region, but by 1950s this city had over 80000 acres of land cultivated for citrus fruits.   

Emerging as a hub of economic activities

Orlando had acquired electricity by 1900s and then in 1903 telecom facilities also reached this place. Thereafter, cars were introduced that could be chugged around at a speed of about 5 mph. In 1922, the first airport got opened here, so economic development started taking place at a faster pace. Now, international airport of Orlando welcomes millions of travelers every year.   

As missile factory of Martin Marietta opened in Orlando, this city became one of the major developed cities of Florida and provided employment opportunities to a large number of people in Orlando.