Lockhart mural reveals busy past and looks toward future
So what’s the scoop on Lockhart, the Sentinel’s “On the Town” columnist, Jean Yothers, asked in 1955, writing about the community we pass through as we drive toward Apopka on Edgewater Drive.
Yothers had just attended a wingding hosted by the then newly formed Lockhart Lions Club, with the purpose of interviewing “early settlers and get the low-down on this former saw mill town,” she wrote. Mrs. Violet Wyman, Lockhart pioneer and poetess, would write up the history recorded at the event, at which folks swapped pioneer tales while they munched on chicken pilau, followed by four kinds of pie.
Lumber and citrus
Judging from Yothers’ column, a lot of Orlando folks didn’t know much about Lockhart.
In the late 1800s, the Lockhart area was rich in pine and oak trees, and the town’s namesake, David Lockhart, saw the opportunities those trees presented. He opened a sawmill. Soon Lockhart became an important location for the transport of both lumber and citrus.
“Lockhart has enjoyed over a century of strong industry, civic, educational and cultural groups,” says Orange County Commissioner Christine Moore of District 2.
Moore fostered a Lockhart Community History Mural project, in which Central Florida artist Lisa Mikler revealed stories of the area’s past through a 123-foot-long, fourpanel painting on a wall at Edgewater and Lake Lockhart Drive. It was dedicated at the end of February. (You can see online at www.lockhartmural.com/.)
From Sweden
Mikler worked on the project for six months, researching records and talking with long-time community residents such as Lena Isaacson, who described how her ancestors traveled to the United States from the Uppsala region of Sweden to escape harsh conditions there.
“They came by boat from Jacksonville to Sanford, proceeded by foot through miles of forest and carved out a life for themselves in Central Florida,” Isaacson says. She still lives on the original homestead property her family purchased in 1880.
The first panel of Mikler’s mural depicts Lockhart around the time the Isaacsons arrived, along with other pioneer families, including the Hills, Roses, Wilseys, Woffords, and Davises, in days when people traveled by steamboat to Sanford and then followed the Wekiva and Little Wekiva rivers until they found land that looked good for growing citrus.
Another panel depicts the community after a boiler explosion destroyed David Lockhart’s sawmill, and the Overstreet Crate Company opened in its place in the early 20th century. The Overstreet company employed 300 people and built 20 percent of all the orange crates that were shipped out of Florida. In 1917, it too burned to the ground, never to be rebuilt. But Lockhart’s industrial legacy lives on in businesses such as Finfrock, Cemex and Outdoor Living Products.
From past to future
Mikler’s research was exhaustive. One panel shows two women folding a quilt that’s painted to resemble an entry that the Lockhart Chamber of Commerce displayed at an Orange County Fair. The final panel depicts tourist attractions and downtown Orlando, which Lockhart helped build, in the distance.
Moore sees the mural as the potential start of a “new Lockhart” district that includes new businesses, attainable housing and access to the new Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail. It’s a vision that includes storefronts along Edgewater Drive and a community in which families will ride bicycles and students will walk to school. Perhaps it’s a vision with echoes of the Lockhart that began with pioneers.
“Imagine a small town built on the shoulders of pioneers who risked everything to make a decent life for themselves,” says Isaacson. “We don’t want that to get lost in time.”