Rockledge citrus before and after the 1894-95 freeze

Citrus came to Rockledge with its first settlers. Gardner S. Hardee, who bought land here in 1868, set about clearing part of it and planting groves, according to the National Park Service’s history of the town, and through the 1880s the Rockledge groves grew fast, “interrupted only by a minor freeze in 1886.” H.S. Williams owned the most extensive grove in town, and in 1889 he and several other growers formed the Florida Fruit Growers Association. “The Indian River orange soon became famous nationwide,” the form says.

Then came the winter of 1894-95, with two freezes six weeks apart, and the Park Service form calls the result devastating: the town’s population fell from a pre-freeze high of about 400 to about 272 by 1900.

The growing years

Rockledge’s citrus boom ran alongside its tourist trade. Groves needed a way to market, and the town’s growers got one in stages: steamboats on the St. Johns to Lake Poinsett from 1880, the railroad to Titusville and steamboats on the Indian River from 1885, and finally direct rail service of their own in 1893. The Park Service says the 1893 railroad set off a new rush of planting, “now that growers had the means of more efficiently shipping their products to market and receiving the supplies necessary to continue their operations.” Success drew newcomers who wanted groves of their own.

Two freezes

The U.S. Department of Agriculture sent Herbert J. Webber to study what happened, and his report, printed in the department’s 1895 yearbook, is the best record of the cold.

The first freeze began on December 27, 1894, and peaked on December 29, with killing frosts across northern and central Florida three days running. Jacksonville fell to 14°F. Webber’s table of readings gives 18° at Titusville and 22° on Merritt Island, across the river from Rockledge. The Park Service’s Rockledge form says growers “lost virtually all fruit that had been waiting to be harvested,” though its Titusville history notes that tree damage in December was relatively slight.

The second freeze came on February 7 to 9, 1895, and was the one that killed. The weeks in between had been warm. Webber writes that orange buds started pushing about January 18, and by February 7 the new growth was one to four inches long, with flower buds forming. Then the temperature dropped again, to 19° at Titusville and 22° on Merritt Island on the morning of February 8. “The oldest and youngest trees, whether sweet or sour, were alike killed to the ground throughout the greater part of the State,” Webber wrote.

Webber’s report also notes a smaller loss specific to Rockledge. The satin leaf, which he said probably had the most beautiful foliage of any native Florida tree, “was frozen down about Rockledge, its northern limit.”

What it did to Rockledge

The losses spread past the groves. The Park Service form describes railroad cars standing empty on their sidings, packing houses closed and workers without jobs. In Rockledge, some of the big growers had enough capital to recover by about 1900, but “the majority of the owners of small groves were ruined and forced to leave the area.” Tourism fell off at the same time, as the railroad carried winter visitors on to Palm Beach and Miami.

And the recovery

The groves came back, and the freeze moved the industry toward them. With commercial citrus in north Florida wiped out, growers from that region moved south to the Indian River, where freezes did less harm. By 1900, the Park Service says, Brevard was again one of Florida’s leading citrus counties, with “much of the production and processing” centered around Rockledge, and in the century’s first decade Rockledge and Cocoa were headquarters for the Florida Citrus Exchange’s cooperative packing and marketing. By 1910 Rockledge’s population was back to its pre-freeze level.

The county-wide story of the freeze is on Old Space Coast’s Great Freeze page.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon