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Volusia County, Florida, circa 1904. "De Leon Springs near DeLand." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
I sure would like to go there and have some lemonade with Aunt T.
Looks like a diving platform up in the tree to the right of the house.
Add some moonlight, some fireflies and some desultory plunking on a fretless banjo, render it all in Color by Technicolor, and this could be the spot-on inspiration for the Blue Bayou Restaurant in Disneyland, a favorite and relaxing spot for late lunches after a morning of too much sun and fun.
Located in Central Florida, DeLeon Springs has a unique history. The spring was utilized as early as the late 1800's to refine sugar and crops by way of a sugar mill. The mill was powered by the spring's strong outflow of water. A retaining wall was built to increase the flow.
DeLeon springs has a basin about 100 yards wide and depths near the center vent are around 25 feet. From the vent, about 4 feet wide, a cave continues for approximately 170 feet.
A retaining wall makes spring look like an artifical pool, and visibilty is not that great in the basin, primarily due to large crowds. Green algae covers the bottom.
You don't string a seine in a swamp. Looks like they caught something.
This is the perfect setting for a movie about a Voodoo queen, even though it is Florida. Also, in the left side window upstairs there seems to be somebody standing back away from the glass (visible in the lower left pane) as if they do not want to be seen in the photograph. I would bet things get pretty eerie at night around here. Even now I can hear the bullfrogs, crickets and nocturnal sounds of the swamp and smell the steamy, earthy odor wafting over the stagnant water.
[This is a spring, so the water is anything but stagnant. - Dave]
My mistake. I must be smelling something else, maybe the decomposing organic matter.
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