September 24, 2023
Looking west from my home, through pine trees along the lakeshore, I can see Lake Apopka. Further, beyond eye sight lies Gourd Neck Spring, the headwaters of the Ocklawaha River basin. The water from the spring flows into Lake Apopka, through the Beauclair canal into Lake Beauclair, into Lake Dora, through the Dora canal into Lake Eustis, continuing through Lake Griffin, Connecting to the Ocklawaha River and on to the St. Johns River running norths to the Atlantic Ocean . This was a trip on my bucket list. However, much of my adult life, travel between the lakes has been restricted for various reasons and I have only been able to visualize the beauty as told by others who have made the trip in earlier years. The summer of 2022, I was pleasured with a trip through the Dora Canal. We had lunch at the historic Lakeside Inn in Mount Dora before boarding the boat just a few yards away. The trip was two hours long and nominally priced.
The Dora Canal was created in 1882 when the former Elfin River was dug out to make it larger to accommodate bigger steamships for transporting people and commerce across the Harris Chain of Lakes. The canal of today, in some areas, has homes built to waters edge but still has a primitive feel in other areas There was a variety of plant life including mosses, trees and flowers. Turtles and alligators lounged on the canal banks. An array of birds flew between the trees, our intrusion into their universe didn’t seem to bother the wildlife. We went out of the canal, under four lanes of U.S.Highway 441 into Lake Eustis to turn around. On our return trip we took a tour down a tributary that appeared at first to have no habitation. The people seemed to co-exist with the wildlife respectfully. Water travel was a popular way to travel before the invention of trains, , planes and auto-mobiles. Sean McKeen, from my first published novel, Our Place in Time, traveled by water on his migration to Florida in the late 1800’s. He experienced the rush of the water from the St. Johns River flowing into the Atlantic Ocean creating turbulent waters, a peril to all ships. He traveled by steamship from Jacksonville, down the St. Johns River into the interior of Florida, making stops at Green Cove Spring and Palatka. Palatka was a bustling , modern town of that
period in history. He disembarked the steamship in Melonville now known as Sanford. He traveled by ox cart to Apopka, where he boarded a steamship crossing Lake Apopka to the Town of Oakland, a short distance east of Gourd Neck Spring.