Fern cultivation gave rise to a new town with the Haines, Barnett, Casselberry, and Vaughn families as its royal court.

Before Seminole County was created in 1913, the area now known as Casselberry was called the Concord Settlement. I explored the village’s early pioneers in a previous article.

That community mostly dried up in the 1880s, after its church burned and the railroad stopped at Longwood and Altamonte instead. Any remaining hope for Concord’s long-term development was likely killed off (with all the citrus) during the great freeze of 1894–1895.

Since orange groves take about seven years to become productive, the citrus industry didn’t come back online until the new century. But it eventually recovered and once again became the section’s primary industry by the 1910s.

At the same time, a steady stream of wealthy tourists from Boston began frequenting Altamonte Springs, often staying from December through April. Among the winter guests was former New York congressman Charles Delemere Haines, who decided to make Altamonte Springs his full-time home in 1911. His estate west of Lake Orienta was as stunning as it was expansive.

On this thousand-acre property, which he shared with his brother-in-law and business manager, George Kingsley, the railroad entrepreneur experimented with cultivating various crops. Asparagus plumosus ultimately became their main product, marketed as “ferns” (though technically they are in the lily family).

These bristly plants are grown as ornamentals, often a foundation of floral bouquets in northern markets. They were a welcome alternative to citrus and a boon to the economy after freezes — because ferns can go from seed to harvest in less than a year.

During cold snaps, growers successfully salvaged the frost-sensitive crops by burning thousands of gallons of oil. They harvested multiple times a year, with demand peaking around Easter and Christmas. Afterward, the vast acreage was mowed down almost to the root. This aggressive pruning ensured the highest-quality feathery fronds would spring up.

Since they cannot survive in direct sun, fern cultivation requires slat-shed structures. Single ferneries could span 65 acres, so we are talking massive footprints of shade houses. Locally, Haines’ Royal Fernery was styled as “the largest industry under one roof.” Its 3,500,000 lengths of lath, laid end to end, would stretch from Altamonte to New York and back.

By 1920, the Royal Fernery had birthed an entire company town southwest of Altamonte Springs. Its facilities included 44 shotgun houses that provided free rent for its (mostly black) workers, a self-contained electrical and water system, a theater, a store, a church, and a school.

With that success and rising demand, the Haines family expanded by purchasing 160 acres along Lake Ellen in 1921, which they called the Haines Fernery. His brother, Elmer T. Haines (mayor of newly incorporated Altamonte Springs), managed that operation. They added acreage north of Lake Concord and branded it Standard Fern Company, under the control of nephew Benjamin F. Haines.

Gordon Barnett, a friend of the Haines family, decided to jump into the fernery business himself. At the time, Barnett edited the Winter Garden Herald, where he saw the fern business blossoming around the Lake Apopka region. Barnett’s father was Presbyterian minister Augustus Barnett, an English immigrant and a prominent local businessman in his own right.

The Barnett family purchased a swath of land between Lake Lotus and Lake Concord, which Gordon platted as Fern Park in 1923. The Barnett Fern Company opened for business in 1925, with headquarters at what is now the corner of Oleander Way and Anchor Road.

With the Great Florida Land Boom in full blast, Barnett decided to do something different. Instead of cultivating all the land himself, which would have required massive capital to build the shade houses, he marketed the area to home buyers as Fern Park Estates.

Each one-acre lot included not only a lovely modern home but also a mini fernery behind it. The company assisted homeowners with cultivation, marketing, and sales. With this arrangement, home buyers had a ready-made income source that also helped finance Barnett’s expansion.

Around that time, Chicago residents Hibbard and Mary Leonard Casselberry vacationed in Winter Park in 1926 to visit Mary’s aunt (after whom she was named). The couple and their two young children fell in love with the beautiful region full of lovely lakes and decided to make it home.

Hibbard later told a reporter: “We came to Florida to spend two weeks. We liked it and decided to spend two months. Then we decided to stay a year, and somehow that year isn’t up yet.”

He opened a florist shop on Park Avenue and met Gordon Barnett. As the New Dixie Highway was constructed along the eastern boundary of the plat (State Road 3, which would later become US Highway 17–92), Casselberry knew Barnett had a huge opportunity.

The wealthy Midwesterner worked for Barnett as a sales agent for Fern Park Estates in 1927. Then, indeed, a conflict of interest, he purchased 3,000 acres of land south and east of Barnett’s Fern Park Estates. The plot spanned both sides of the new highway and encompassed a dozen lakes.

Casselberry sold his small nursery on the southwestern end of Lake Orienta to the Hattaway family and focused solely on the Fern Park project. Hibbard founded the Winter Park Fern Company and followed the Barnett model by subdividing much of the land for home buyers.

The two men became partners in the Winter Park Fernery venture for a time, but that affiliation was short-lived. As sales declined during the Great Depression, the two men divorced their operations by 1933.

By then, Fern Park had become a booming suburb, a halfway point on the straight shot between Sanford and Orlando. Though unincorporated, Fern Park was far more developed than its municipal neighbors, Longwood and Altamonte Springs.

The Dixie Highway through Fern Park was lined with agriculture (ferneries, nurseries, citrus groves, and poultry) and small commercial buildings, including a candy company, antique shop, and tea room. The town received a post office in 1928 next to the Barnett Packing House, which moved to an upgraded facility along State Road 3 (17–92) in 1930.

Months before the stock market bottomed out in 1929, Charles Haines died. His nephew Benjamin took over many of the family’s fern business interests and became mayor of Altamonte Springs in 1932.

However, depressed northern markets weakened demand for ornamental ferns, and the Haines empire began to decline. Benjamin sold the Royal Fern Company in Altamonte Springs to longtime friend Arthur Crowley of Medford, Massachusetts (a town Benjamin had previously served as mayor for several terms), but he stayed involved in the business.

Frank Vaughn, a recent transplant from Kansas, purchased the Haines-owned Standard Fernery in 1934. For many decades after, Vaughn became the third of the Fern Park power brokers — with Casselberry and Barnett — and one of the town’s largest employers. This fernery and packing house were where the Home Depot and Publix plazas are today.

In 1936, the ferneries successfully navigated through the worst of the Great Depression. Gordon Barnett was riding high as one of Seminole County’s most beloved citizens. He parlayed that into a winning campaign for the Florida House of Representatives.

During the 1937 legislative session in Tallahassee, Barnett introduced a measure to incorporate the town of Fern Park. He boldly claimed the initiative had the population’s full support, which sounded legit since Representative Barnett was the town founder and a popularly elected congressman. It passed the House, was rubber-stamped by the Senate, and headed to the governor’s desk for signature.

Only it wasn’t true. The soon-to-be annexed citizens of the new municipality were vehemently against it. The clock was ticking.

Fern Park resident R. C. Nash frantically telegraphed Governor Fred P. Cone, Senator J. J. Parrish (Titusville), and Representative H. J. Lehmann (Sanford), asking them to stop its passage. Meanwhile, four carloads of locals headed for Tallahassee to personally fend it off. They carried a petition opposing incorporation, signed by 75% of registered voters.

Governor Cone assured the anxious petitioners he would not sign it, and as soon as the Senate reopened, they recalled the bill. Gordon Barnett received a tongue-lashing from his travel-weary constituents and relented.

That same day, he announced that he was “unhesitatingly” withdrawing the bill. However, it was apparent he had no choice! The attempt backfired, and the blunder would be hard to live down.

The proposed charter would have created a three-member town council, casting more doubt on Barnett’s supposed benevolence. It would have installed the initial members for up to four years without an election; they were all close friends of Barnett (including an immediate family member). Locals cried out “taxation without representation,” and his credibility was toast.

It probably goes without saying, but Barnett lost his reelection campaign in 1938. Then, in 1939, a massive fire destroyed the three buildings at the Barnett Fernery. The circumstances were considered suspicious. Perhaps angry locals committed arson? No cause or suspect ever surfaced.

Of course, this is not the end of the story; it is just the beginning. If we ended here, the reader might wonder why Fern Park is described as the stretch of highway that is clearly Casselberry today.

That brings us to 1940, when the seeds of a war about to erupt were being sown. No, not the one over in Nazi Germany, but right here in South Seminole County.

Anger over Gordon Barnett’s proposed incorporation and tax levy in Fern Park merged with Hibbard Casselberry’s unquenchable ambition, sparking a coup d’etat that created the town of Casselberry and a bitter feud that spanned decades over each town’s right to exist.

But, my friends, for that story, read on in part two…

War of 17–92: Casselberry v. Fern Park