HISTORY OF PASCO COUNTY

Port Richey

New Hotel at Port Richey to be Opened

Flourishing Colony Is Getting a Good Start Here

There is much activity at Port Richey, which, because of the development of the colony lands surrounding it, is beginning to take on a new life. The building of the railroad from Tarpon Springs to Port Richey, a distance of seven miles, also has much to do with the improvements now going on.

The new hotel being erected by the Port Richey company is nearly completed and will be ready for guests about February 1. It is a well constructed frame building with wide verandas, large office and dining room and ten or twelve bed rooms. The hotel will be operated by the Port Richey company, and while it will be kept in the best of style, the price for accommodations will be very low, the idea of the company being not to make money, but to provide a comfortable and inexpensive stopping place for land buyers who may desire to spend a few days looking over the Port Richey company's lands. As soon as the brick for the chimney arrive the work will be finished.

Mr. McNatt is erecting a new store building and will soon have it filled with a good stock of goods.

The Port Richey colony lands have been open to settlement only a short time, yet a number of ten and twenty acre tracts have been purchased by homeseekers, many of whom have already moved on their lands and are beginning to make improvements. These lands are among the best in Florida, and homeseekers who look them over usually buy, feeling they have found what they were looking for.

No day passes on which one of the Port Richey company's automobiles does not bring up a party of homeseekers, but Thursday they broke the record by bringing up a party of twenty in four automobiles. These people were from all parts of the United States and had the appearance of belonging to the better class. Many of the party made purchases, selecting orange and truckland.

The recent cold snap was but slightly felt in Port Richey. The temperature in the north was below zero, but at Port Richey the temperature was along in the 40s, and the "spell" lasted only a day and a half. At this writing (January 18) the thermometer stands at 67.

Mr. Horace Everett of the Everett Press company, of Boston, has purchased 25 acres at Port Richey and expects to arrive here soon with a view to erecting a comfortable winter home and planting a large grapefruit grove.

The Mayors of Port Richey

Note: Hoffman was named Mayor by the charter; V. M. Clark was the first elected mayor. The name Slagle also appears as Slagel.

Port Richey Council Members

Port Richey: “Once Like a Wilderness”

PORT RICHEY -- Try to imagine a time when there were only four houses in Port Richey, the whole area was "like a wilderness," and cattle-rustling and rum-running were nothing out of the ordinary.

If all that seems a little unlikely, take Mrs. Earl Woodruff's word for it; Port Richey was a lot different in the old days."

Mary Woodruff (born Mary Clark) was born in Port Richey 68 years ago, and has lived here all her life. She is related, either by blood or marriage, to three of the first families ever to arrive here: the Nicks, Clark and Hill families.

Her father, David Clark, was a member of both Port Richey city council and the Pasco County Commission, which then met in Dade City on Mondays. "I used to go with Dad to some of the commission meetings," she recalls.

When they needed food or supplies, they would go by horse and wagon, or by boat, to Tarpon Springs. "That was where the nearest railhead was," Mrs. Woodruff says. Later, her father opened the first grocery store in Port Richey, and also operated the post office.

She was a graduate of the Gulf High School Class of 1925. "There were only six of us in that class," she says. "My dad helped build the school, too." Present-day Pasco-Hernando Community College is located in the old high school building.

"My father moved to Brooksville with his family when he was a small boy." she recalls. "They moved to the coast, then back to Brooksville, but later Dad moved out here to stay."

The reason for all the moving back and forth, she says, was "cattle rustlers." Her family raised cattle, along with a lot of other families in those days, and "the rustlers would kill you for your cattle," she says. "In fact, they'd just as soon kill you as look at you."

There were feuds between the rustler gangs, too. One day my father was out plowing in the fields when he heard some shots go by. It was the rustlers shooting at each other, but they missed!

"Then another time, dad said, a wagon came by with the bodies of two men the rustlers had killed. It was their families, taking them home for burial."

But rustlers weren't the only enemies in the early days. There were natural enemies, like panthers. "We would hear the hogs squealing at night, and we wouldn't dare go out because we knew it was the panthers getting into the hog pen."

"I remember my grandfather talking about the Indians killing people, too, but that was way before my time, even before my dad's time."

Mrs. Woodruff also recalls the days of rum-running and "rum wars." "It was before Prohibition," she says. "Rum-running was a big business back then."

"The men would go out and meet the Cuban boats (called 'smacks') and trade sweet potatoes, hogs, watermelons, and citrus for the rum." she says. "One of the boys I knew stole a hog one night and went out to meet one of the boats. He got a demijohn (five-gallon glass jug) of rum in return for the hog.

"But a Coast Guard cutter had spotted them, and fired over their bow. So they threw the rum overboard and headed back for shore. But the next day they went out to Anclote Key and found the jug of rum, still intact! The tide had washed it up, so they got their rum after all."

Mrs. Woodruff claims the original spelling of Pithlachascotee was "Pithlachascoochee" and that the old-timers told her it was an Indian word meaning "jug of rum."

"There were several prominent local people killed in those rum wars," she says. "The big shots would fight for control of the rum trade.

"Until I graduated from high school, my dad would never answer the door. They always sent a woman to the door in those days, because if it was one of your enemies they wouldn't shoot a woman.

"But they'd just as soon shoot you as look at you," she repeats.

David “Hap” Clark Remembers

By STEVE McQUILKIN

It's not hard for David Clark Jr. to think of Pasco County without traffic and strip shopping centers.

Clark, who was born in west Pasco in 1922, went off to college before U.S. Highway 19 was built and was nearing retirement when Gulfview Square Mall in Port Richey opened.

Clark, known as Hap, remembers when the county consisted mostly of pine trees and alligator-rich swampland and when congestion on U.S. 19 was caused not by cars but by cattle camping out on the road to keep warm. Those were the days of the open range, when fences were used sparingly, and scrawny range cattle roamed freely.

Clark, 69, remembers when most of the county's leaders, including County Administrator John Gallagher, Tax Collector Mike Olson and former Sheriff John Short, were crank-playing schoolchildren. He remembers coaching Circuit Court Clerk Jed Pittman in football.

So what was it like growing up in Pasco?

"There was nothing to do because there was nothing here," said Clark, owner of Clark's Landing restaurant in Port Richey.

In the past four decades, Clark and other older natives have had to make room for Pasco's 281,000 residents.

Clark's grandfather, James W. Clark, moved to Pasco from Brooksville in 1880 - in part to safeguard his small cattle operation from rustlers, Hap Clark said.

During much of his childhood, the Clark family made a decent living raising cattle and tending orange groves. The market hubs in Florida were Cedar Key and Jacksonville, and early residents got to those cities by boat or rail. Clark remembers a 9-foot-wide road to Weeki Wachee that was replaced by a two-lane road in the 1940s - U.S. 19.

He spent much of his time fishing around New Port Richey and Port Richey. On the weekends, he and other boys would run into the woods trying to catch cows. "There wasn't a lot to do here except play outside," he said.

Once in the 1930s, he and a friend shot a woman's pet rabbit while rabbit hunting. New Port Richey's sole policeman punished the boys by taking away their shotguns for a day.

At the time, with west Pasco teeming with deer, bears and alligators, no one questioned why two boys would tote shotguns in broad daylight. "You could do anything you wanted to because you never got in anybody's way," he said. "Now you can't seem to do anything without bothering someone."

Clark and his playmates used to make their own versions of baseballs by wrapping string tightly and then using a needle and thread to stitch the ball together.

Clark said his father had his money in three banks that all failed during the Depression. The family was left without any cash but with a 10-acre citrus grove and a 10-acre farm. The older boys fished for food and extra cash.

During the Depression, many people moved into vacant homes in west Pasco until someone forced them to move out. Then they would move into another vacant home, he said.

"Things were much looser then, and people did pretty much what they had to do to get by," he said.

At the time Clark attended Gulf High School, there were only 125 students in grades seven to 12, and the school's area encompassed all homes west of U.S. Highway 41.

When he was old enough to drive, Clark and his buddies would race down Grand Boulevard.

"We used to go down Grand Boulevard like crazy people because there wasn't any traffic and no law to speak of," he said.

Clark, a retired teacher and administrator with Pasco schools, said he can't believe how huge the county's school operations have grown. Clark said there were only about 13 schools in the county until the early-1960s. Now there are 41.

Clark, who graduated from Rollins College in 1949, started as a coach and teacher, first at Zephyrhills High School and later at Pasco Comprehensive School in Dade City. He moved into administration and served as principal of Hudson Elementary from 1963 to 1979.

Until the late-1950s there were still only a few stores in New Port Richey, he recalled.

"We did most of our shopping in Tarpon Springs because there wasn't much to get here," he said.

Most of Pasco's growth came after a developer from Pinellas started building in Holiday during the late-1950s and early-1960s, he said. At the time, the county had no zoning restrictions, and the developer was selling two-bedroom homes with carports for $5,990. Many of the homes are still standing, he said.

Letter to the Governor (November 1935)

I have been Mayor of Port Richey for eight years, and for the last six months the Council have not been functioning, not being able to get a quorum together, and some of them have moved away from here, and nobody has been appointed in their place.

This Fall is time for Election, and I have posted Notice for Meeting or Caucus to nominate Candidates for Election (Councilmen and Mayor), and nobody attended.

Most of the people have neglected paying Taxes. We have no Bonded Indebtedness and no money in the treasury.

The reason for being incorporated is so we would not be taken in by our neighbor City, which has a heavy bonded indebtedness.

What shall I do?

Yours respectfully,
John Nelson, Mayor

The Governor’s reply: “Dear Mr. Nelson: This is to acknowledge receipt of your letter with reference to your City affairs, and to advise you that this is a matter that you should take up with an attorney, as I have no supervision over municipalities in affairs of this kind. Sincerely yours, David Sholtz, Governor.”