Water, Water Everywhere

Pasco County at a glance

LAND AREA (SQUARE MILES): 745
PERSONS PER SQUARE MILE (2000): 462.9
POPULATION (2004 ESTIMATE): 22.6 percent
COLLEGE GRADUATES: 13.1 percent
MEAN TRAVEL TIME TO WORK (MINUTES): 30
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME (1999): $32,969

Pasco County once had a split personality. The west-side communities of Holiday, New Port Richey and Port Richey were developed primarily for Midwestern retirees, who flocked to small, inexpensive homes up and down the U.S. 19 corridor.

Meanwhile, the county's east side, anchored by quaint Dade City, remained vintage Florida. With the exception of Zephyrhills, which was (and still is) invaded by seasonal residents during the winter months, the east side was populated mostly by natives, many of whom were longtime ranchers or citrus growers.

But in recent years, as both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have begun to run out of developable land, growth has begun marching steadily into Pasco, changing old assumptions and diversifying the demographics.

Subdivisions of new homes have been appearing, seemingly overnight, along the entire width of the C.R. 54 corridor on Pasco's southern boundary, stretching from Trinity on the west to Zephyrhills on the east. Younger, first-time buyers for whom affordability is paramount have begun snapping up the small west-side homes once owned by retirees.

On the east side, New Tampa's growth has impacted Wesley Chapel and Zephyrhills, where pastures and groves are giving way to neighborhoods. And in the central part of the county, around Land O' Lakes, the new Suncoast Parkway has opened up huge tracts for family-oriented, master-planned communities.

As a result, Pasco County's population has climbed 45 percent from 1990 to 2004-and the pace will only increase.

"The demand for land is like nothing I've ever seen before," says Dewey Mitchell, part of a pioneering Pasco ranching family and co-owner of Prudential Tropical Realty, one of the top three real estate companies in Tampa Bay.

"While real estate prices have climbed sharply in recent years, we're still a good value," says Mitchell. "After 20 years around here without much appreciation, we're really just now reaching the national median home price."

New-home permitting in Pasco County reached historic highs last year, climbing from 2,931 single-family permits issued in 2000 to 6,399 issued in 2004. In fact, earlier this year east-side communities such as Meadow Pointe in Wesley Chapel and New River near Zephyrhills had to turn away hundreds of potential buyers because lots weren't yet available.

The shortage is likely to be short-lived, as thousands of acres, particularly in central Pasco, are prepped to become gigantic master-planned communities. Connerton, for instance, will eventually include 8,700 homes and a town center east of U.S. 41 in Land O' Lakes.

But long before anybody thought of doing anything more than raising cattle and harvesting lumber in central Pasco, there were several thriving towns and communities in other parts of the county.

Dade City became Pasco County's seat of government in 1887, when Pasco and Hernando counties separated. Before that, it was an Indian trading post. The Seminoles, then called the Southern Creeks, had been living in the area as far back as the 1700s. In fact, a Seminole attack inspired the city's name. In 1835, Major Francis Dade and his men were attacked and killed by a Seminole war party under the command of Chief Alligator. A fort was named in Dade's honor, and the name stuck.

Today, Dade City's recently renovated, circa-1909 courthouse remains a focal point. The downtown area, with its ample supply of quaint antique shops and restaurants, draws visitors from all over Florida.

The nearby communities of San Antonio and St. Leo got their start in 1882, when Edmund F. Dunne, former chief justice of the Arizona territory, was walking through the hills north of Dade City with his cousin. The pair spotted an unusually clear lake and decided that its shores would be an ideal spot for a Catholic colony. At the time, Roman Catholics had been experiencing discrimination in both Ireland and in many parts of the United States.

The pair named the lake Jovita because they had spotted it on the Feast Day of St. Jovita. In acknowledgement of an answered prayer, Dunne named his planned town San Antonio, after St. Anthony of Padua.

Dunne plotted streets and residential lots for his colony, setting aside property for schools, a monastery, a convent and an orphan's asylum. In the middle of town he planned a public square. By 1883, San Antonio boasted several stores, a barnlike church and a school.

The community of St. Leo, originally a spin-off of San Antonio, sits just to the east. Its claim to fame is St. Leo University, a small liberal-arts college overlooking Lake Jovita. The school was chartered in 1889, when the Florida Legislature authorized the Order of St. Benedict of Florida to confer academic degrees. It now has a total enrollment of more than 2,100 on its main campus, 7,600 on military bases and community colleges in five states and 3,300 in the Center for Online Learning.

New communities in the area include Lake Jovita Golf and Country Club, a 1,054-acre community with 820 homes. Offerings range from million-dollar estates on lakefront acreage to 1,734-square-foot furnished villas on the golf course.

Unincorporated Land O' Lakes is more of an area than a community. It didn't even have an official name until about 1950, when several residents came up with the whimsical moniker and installed it on the local post office. The name fits; there's more water than land in the area. All that waterfront, and the location just across the line from Tampa" target="_blank">Hillsborough County, has made Land O' Lakes a hot housing market that will only get hotter as more ranchland is sold to developers.

Another Land O' Lakes claim to fame: nudism. An estimated 100,000 people each year visit the area's clothing-optional resorts.

New Port Richey, now Pasco County's largest municipality with 16,000 residents, was a quaint village on the Pithlachascotee River in the 1930s, when writers from the Works Progress Administration dropped by to research WPA's Guide to Florida. Here's how they described what they saw:

Along the high banks of the river, commonly known as the 'Cootee,' are many small cottages, most of them built out of brown and white stone from the bed of the stream; petunias, snapdragons, sweet peas and calendulas bloom profusely in the gardens; the roads are shaded by large oaks and magnolias.

In fact, New Port Richey's downtown area remains picturesque to this day. And it's an ideal setting for the city's biggest annual event, the Chasco Fiesta, which honors a complicated romantic legend involving a Spanish boy and girl, a priest and a Calusa Indian tribe that captured them.

The biggest development New Port Richey has seen in years, Main Street Landing, is under way on the river near downtown. Most of the 44 residential units in the $30 million mixed-use project were sold even before construction started, at prices ranging from $300,000 to $585,000. In addition to the condominiums, Main Street Landing will include retail shops, restaurants and docks.

Port Richey, population 3,000, was not incorporated until 1925 but has been an active fishing village since the late 1800s. The city's namesake, Aaron M. Richey, built a home near the mouth of the Pithlachascotee River in 1883. Soon after, he bought a piece of riverfront property to build a dock for his schooner. The enterprising settler later established the city's post office and operated a small general store.

Zephyrhills, described in a 1912 newspaper article as "the healthiest place in Florida," is certainly the best-known Pasco County locale, thanks in large part to Zephyrhills Brand Natural Spring Water, which is bottled here and sold around the world.

In certain circles, the city is also known for its highly productive poultry farms and excellent skydiving facilities. These disparate elements, combined with hilly terrain and genuine charm, make Zephyrhills truly one of a kind.

The community was first known as Abbott, after Dr. J.M. Abbott, who ran a drugstore and practiced medicine at the crossroads of what is now U.S. 301 and Fifth Avenue. The name was revised to Abbott Station in 1896, when a railroad depot opened. The virgin pine forests then growing throughout the region were eventually tapped for turpentine and then cut for lumber. After the stumps were pulled, the land became pastures and citrus groves.

In 1909, a Civil War veteran from Pennsylvania named Captain Howard B. Jeffries decided to start a veteran's colony at Abbott Station. One day, while showing the area to prospective residents from atop LeHeup Hill on Fort King Road, Jeffries heard someone mention the rolling hills and "zephyr-like" breezes-and a new name was born. The community was incorporated as Zephyrhills in 1914.

For most of its history, Zephyrhills has been a highly seasonal place. Today its population of nearly 12,000 doubles and even triples during the winter months as snowbirds flock to relatively inexpensive second homes. But it won't be long before more year-round residents find their way here. As nearby Wesley Chapel, closer to I-75, fills up with new homes, developers are looking east toward Zephyrhills.

Hernando County at a glance

LAND AREA (SQUARE MILES): 478
PERSONS PER SQUARE MILE (2000): 273.5
POPULATION (2004 ESTIMATE): 150,370
POPULATION INCREASE (1990-2000) 29.3 percent
COLLEGE GRADUATES: 12.7 percent
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME (1999): $32,572

Hernando County has thousands of acres of glorious nature preserves, a grand southern belle of a county seat and a thriving new-home market. Yet its national claim to fame is a spring full of faux mermaids.

For nearly 60 years, tourists have come to Weeki Wachee Springs' underwater theater to watch the mermaids perform a variety of underwater feats, discretely breathing through air hoses placed strategically in the scenery.

Even pop tarts Paris Hilton and Nicole Richey worked for a day as Weeki Wachee performers-failing to impress their supervisors-during the filming of their reality series, The Simple Life.

Operated by the City of Weeki Wachee, population nine, and owned by the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the vintage attraction is showing its age and struggling to survive. Led by the tiny town's mayor, mermaid Robyn Anderson, supporters have initiated a "Save Our Tails" campaign to keep the doors open.

Brooksville, the only other incorporated city in Hernando, is the county seat, and its history reaches back more than a century before mermaids began cavorting in the Weeki Wachee River.

Fort DeSoto was built on the northeastern edge of present-day Brooksville around 1840 to protect settlers from Indians, but it also functioned as a trading post and a stop on the Concord Stage Coach Line, which ran from Palatka to Tampa.

In 1864, during the Civil War, Brooksville withstood a raid by Union troops trying to stop locals from shipping supplies to the Confederacy. Each January, the city commemorates the raid with a reenactment and a festival.

Originally known as Melendez, Brooksville was renamed by county residents in honor of South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, a states' rights advocate before the Civil War famous for beating an abolitionist senator over the head with his cane after a U.S. Senate debate.

Today, Brooksville, population 7,500, retains much of its historic charm. Victorian homes line brick streets near the picturesque downtown, which is packed with antique shops, a variety of restaurants and the distinctive brick courthouse.

So, with only two municipalities ranging in size from small to miniscule, where do all the people live in Hernando County?

Plenty of them live in unincorporated Spring Hill, on the county's west side. First developed in the 1960s by the Deltona Corporation, Spring Hill's population has more than doubled, from a little more than 30,000 in 1990 to nearly 70,000 by 2000. Much of that growth is a result of homes popping up on infill lots left over from the community's early days.

That may change in coming years, as master-planned communities invade central and eastern Hernando County, thanks in part to the Suncoast Parkway, a 57-mile toll road that runs from the Veteran's Expressway near Tampa International Airport to the Citrus County line.

Hernando Oaks, the county's first large development in more than a decade, was approved in 1999. It was followed by Sterling Hill, Trillium and the Villages at Avalon. A handful of others are also ramping up.

With development poised to boom in Hernando, substantial portions remain dedicated to pristine nature preserves. The Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge comprises a portion of Hernando's northwest boundary, while the Withlacoochee State Forest and the slow-flowing Withlacoochee River frames its east side.

Nearer the coast, the 6,000-acre Weeki Wachee Preserve provides a home for black bears and bald eagles. And just off the coast lies a long expanse of shallow water stretching far out from land, creating excellent "flats" fishing. Hernando Beach, in fact, is thought to be adjacent to the finest tarpon fishing grounds in the world.

THE FINAL ROUNDUP

It's tough to keep track of the Pasco County ranches and orange groves now in the process of becoming subdivisions.

Tracts that haven't already been bought by developers are about to be snapped up, which keeps the count in constant flux, says Chief Deputy Property Appraiser Wade Barber.

"You start naming the ranches and they just go on and on," says Barber. "It seems like a huge number."

In fact, it is a huge number-tens of thousands of new homes planned for thousands of acres, mostly in Central Pasco County.

"We're getting more subdivisions on a weekly basis than we used to get on an annual basis," adds Barber.

The conversion of Pasco County ranches to communities started in the late '80s, when the Mitchell family sold its land, just north of the Tampa" target="_blank">Pinellas County line in southwestern Pasco, for the Trinity development.

Next, the Starkey family, a little further east along the SR. 54 corridor, decided to develop their own neotraditional project and Longleaf was born.

But things have accelerated rapidly in the last few years.

The former Conner family ranch is now under development as Connerton by TerraBrook. The 10,000-acre project will ultimately encompass 8,700 homes surrounding a town center.

Bella Verde, a community with more of a Mediterranean flavor, is up and running on the former Cannon Ranch property off C.R. 52 near San Antonio. That 1,966-acre project is approved for 6,700 homes.

But the biggest Pasco County development of all, called Wiregrass, is still working its way through the approval process.

There are plans for as many as 16,000 homes, townhomes, apartments and duplexes on the 5,000-acre swath of land, located southeast of S.R. 54 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

The tract was originally owned by the Porter family, which sold it to Pulte Homes. The company plans to dole the land out between its three divisions: Pulte, DiVosta and Del Webb.

When patriarch James Porter died in 2003, his son, Don, told a St. Petersburg Times obituary writer that his father would be happy that they turned a profit on the land sale:

"My father for 40 years bemoaned the fact they had overpaid for the property. I think the original price was $3 an acre."