Enterprise Prospers

In 1867 Elijah Watson opened a dry goods store to serve the 486 people in the area. Five years later William Thayer and John Sauls opened a competing store at the corner of DeBary Avenue and Main Street (shown).

By the early 1880s, Enterprise boasted a county courthouse, county jail, post office, the Brock House Hotel and a handful of smaller hotels and boardinghouses, several dry goods stores, a drug store, real estate firms, a jewelry store, sawmill, and a newspaper, The Enterprise Herald. The arcade building shown here was built in the 1880s and at various times housed a jelly factory and the Children’s Home.

Enterprise Incorporates and De-incorporates

In 1877, twenty-five citizens voted to incorporate Enterprise. Ten of them became town officials. The town seal (right) shows what may be the old shell mound to the right of a tree. At the base of the tree appears to be an ax which is leaning against the trunk. In the late 1880s a yellow fever epidemic raged across the state, closing down entire cities. The population of Enterprise was reduced so much that the town voted to de-incorporate in 1895.

The “old yellow hotel,” once located across Main Street from the Padgett house, offered accommodations and entertainment for the steamboat clientele at the turn of the century. Later, Mother Hattie Brooks took over the ground floor to house the first children in her home for orphans, among them Miss Doris Faber, who became the caretaker for the Thornby Estate owned by Dr. and Mrs. John Henderson Glass. The building was torn down sometime after the 1960s.

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