If you’re from Plant City or if you tend to visit its historic downtown area, you know it’s all about the trains. If nothing else, you know that if traffic is tied up, it is probably not a traffic jam; it is a train crossing.
“We love our trains, without which there would be no Plant City,” said local Plant City historian Gil Gott. “Imagine, if you will, what it was like before the railroad came. The roads were barely what we would call roads, dirt and sand and narrow. There were no Wawas or Circle Ks, no McDonald’s and no AAAs if you break down. The weather could be beautiful or horrendous and you had to find a way to deal with it while taking care of yourself, your ox or mule and your produce, and it took forever to get to Tampa, unload your produce and return home.”
When the Plant City Union Depot was built in 1902, it played an important role in the early development of Plant City, whose main industries of farming, lumber and phosphate mining depended heavily on the railroad.
The station once served both the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and the Seaboard Air Line Railroad. Mail also arrived in Plant City via this depot, and the Western Union telegraph service was based there. The Plant City Union Depot continued to operate until 1971. It was added to the National Register of Historic Buildings in 1974.
“Word of a potential railway coming into the area to lead from east to west to Tampa was powerful news,” Gott said. “Businesspeople and farmers began planning for a possible new future. They surveyed the area for the potential railway and suddenly land was being purchased for development. By droves, people began to leave their communities for the promise of the new town.”
In January 1884, when the Florida Southern Railroad, part of Henry B. Plant’s railroad system, completed the railway all the way from Sanford to Tampa, with Sanford’s access to the St. Johns River, Jacksonville and north and Tampa’s access to the Gulf Coast and beyond. In the center of all this was a town soon to be named for Mr. Plant.
“Plant City was named after Henry B. Plant,” Gott said. “The Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Air Line merged into the Seaboard Coast Line in 1967, terminating passenger service to Plant City in 1970. The station, known as the ‘depot,’ was deeded to the City of Plant City in 1974. It was saved from demolition by the arts council and is now the Willaford Railroad Museum. Freight transportation to and from Plant City has diminished but is still strong, and freight will be riding the rails in Plant City for years to come.”
The Robert W. Willaford Railroad Museum is located at 102 N. Palmer St. in Plant City. If you would like to learn more about the museum, you can visit the museum’s website at www.willafordrailroadmuseum.com.
