Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of our feature Better Country Beyond, with excerpts from DeLandite Karen Ryder’s book about the early days of the founding of the city of DeLand.
The Beacon is indebted to Donna Jean Flood, a DeLand financial adviser with Edward Jones, for the idea for this series, part of our ongoing West Volusia Memories series by community writers.

Persimmon Hollow

In the early 1870s, when orange fever was erupting, steamboat travel was the only means of transportation south of Jacksonville. Therefore, most of the early development in Central Florida occurred in the interior along the shores of the St. Johns River.  

On the east coast of Volusia County, there were a few homes at New Smyrna and a few others at Daytona, but both of these were small settlements compared to the city of Enterprise on Lake Monroe, which served as the hub for all the steamboat traffic on the river and also as the county seat of Volusia County.   

Only two settlements existed near the boundaries of the present-day city of DeLand. To the north was the community of Volusia, located just south of Lake George near the site where the Mayacan Mission and Spalding’s Upper Indian Store once stood.  

South of this site was the second settlement, located on Lake Beresford near where Lord Beresford had established a plantation and boat landing. In 1872, Capt. Andrew Alexander homesteaded 500 acres east of the lake and built a boat dock with a small trading store and post office near where Beresford’s had been. Soon riverboat captains began referring to it as Alexander’s Landing. It was the only mercantile available to homesteaders between the towns of Enterprise and Volusia. 

The land within the immediate environment of present-day DeLand was rich in natural resources, so it is not surprising that a new community sprang up there during the days when orange fever had settlers in its grip.  

The terrain was composed almost entirely of a dense forest of 100-foot-tall longleaf pine. These trees comprised what once was one of the most extensive forests in North America, covering an estimated 90 million acres. It spanned the Gulf and Atlantic coastal plains from Virginia to Texas and also reached farther inland to areas of Florida, Alabama and Georgia.  

Today, the longleaf pine forests are one of the most endangered ecosystems in the country. Only 12,000 acres of old-growth longleaf pine remain, and they are located in largely fragmented stands that are in poor condition. 

Origin of the name

The new community was referred to as “Persimmon Hollow” because of the presence there of a large depression, which allowed water to accumulate.  

This water retention enabled wild fruit, particularly persimmons, to grow in abundance. When the fruit was ripe, congregations of deer, quail and other wild animals were lured to the water hole to drink and feast, and thus the spot became a prime hunting ground for the new pioneers of the area, just as it had been for the native tribes who preceded them.

However, another distinct geological feature would bring this place its greatest prosperity. Persimmon Hollow was located midway along a natural geological rise that is the highest in the eastern portion of Florida. Known as the Volusia Ridge, it is an extension of a worn-down, prehistoric mountain range that begins in the central highlands.  

Topographically it takes the shape of a nearly 20-mile-long, 5-mile-wide “island” of land that has a northern end just south of DeLeon Springs and a southern end just south of Orange City. 

The ridge slopes down on the western side into the swampland along the St. Johns River and on the eastern side into the flatwood trough that borders the Atlantic Ocean.

Once it had been proved that citrus could be grown in these high pine lands in volumes suitable for commercial purposes, word spread quickly and the Volusia ridge soon was being called “the Orange Ridge.”