Anyone who knows anything about "our Florida," knows that Florida's major industry is tourism. Today, the destination for most people is the coast of Florida or Disney World, but around the turn of the 20th century, many people came to north central Florida to "take the waters" at the various springs, many of which are in our area.
Now, I have written about springs before, but bear with me. What kind of connection could Girl Scout cookies—and I do love their mint cookies—have with area springs?
Here is the answer: Juliet Gordon Lowe, founder of the Girl Scouts of America, was born into a wealthy Savannah, Ga., family in 1860. Her father, W. W. Gordon, Jr., who, along with other members of his family, comprised the W. W. Gordon Company, which took control of White Springs, the health resort around 1894.
Gordon had vast business holdings in Savannah and eventually turned to friends, Minnie Mosher Jackson and her physician brother, Dr. Hugh Mosher, to operate the springs for him. Eventually, Jackson and her brother bought the springs from the Gordon Company and, evidently, Gordon retained a residence in White Springs, because his daughter, Juliet Gordon Lowe, founded the second Girl Scout Troop in the United States of America in White Springs.
There is a memorial marker on the grounds of the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in honor of the establishment of the troop in White Springs.
It is interesting that what is in vogue now, healthier and preventative life styles were all the rage in White Springs. Mosher built the present concrete wall around the springs, along with the springhouse consisting of three stories and elevators for those who were infirmed and unwell.
Mosher even established White Springs Water Ginger Ale, advertised as "pure, healthful, invigorating and refreshing for weak, tired, overstrained nerves, rheumatism and dyspepsia, kidney and stomach trouble."
They say history travels full circle. Who would have dreamed that the bottled water, once sold for pennies at White Sulphur Springs, would become all the rage in the United States of America, or that the Girl Scouts of America, who have millions of members world-wide would establish its second troop in the nation in 1912 in the town of White Springs?
You never know the history of a town, or even part of its history, until you scratch the surface just a bit. All of this interest in the State of Florida was made possible by a man who never saw the Suwannee River, but who put Florida on the map and opened the tourism industry in the state with a song: "There's where my heart is turning ever."
I think I will get a box of Girl Scout cookies out of the deep freezer, enjoy a bottle of cool Zephyrhills water and think, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
From the Eight Mile Still on the Woodpecker Route north of White Springs, wishing you a day filled with joy, peace and above all, lots of love and laughter.