>>This program is brough to you in part by the Paul B.

Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation a proud partner of WUCF, and the Central Florid Community.

>>Up next on this episode of Florida Road Trip... >>Did take a lot of pride in telling the family's story from coming here with nothing.

Literally, what they kind of had on their backs and putting blood, sweat and tears into the land and to now what's grown to be a successful business.

It is that tru American dream story come true.

>>We'll meet some families who moved here nearly a century ago and have become staples of the community ever since.

Plus... >>This is a theater under glass.

There's a whole production going on.

There's a production of lights.

There's a production of sound.

>>Pinball passion?

We found just the place for you while exploring Oviedo.

Buckle up.

Florid Road Trip is back on the road.

♪♪♪ Hi there, and welcome to Florida Road Trip, I'm your host, Scott Fais.

Today, we're just about 20 miles northeast of downtown Orlando in the city of Oviedo, located in Seminole County.

First, as mostl a rural and farming community, Oviedo's more recen history is one of rapid growth.

Those early farming routes began in the 1800s when settlers formed the Lake Jesup community.

>>We've all heard location, location, location.

As people star migrating into central Florida, they came from Jacksonville down the St. John's River on paddle steamers, and they came to tw wharfs on Lake Jesup: Solary's Wharf and White's Wharf.

And the significance of that is that that is the last navigable part of the St. John's River.

So when people came to get to into the interior of Florida, they dropped off in Oviedo because of its location.

>>George Powell was a plantation owner in Georgia during the Civil War.

And after the Civil War, h relocated to Live Oak, Florida.

He became notorious in that area because of the notoriety brought to him by way of his son, Lewis Thornton Powell.

Lewis Powell was one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

George Powell, his father, felt the need to relocate to a relatively anonymous setting.

He chose an area south of Lake Jesup and homesteaded 160 acre initially, which oddly enough, proved to be the majority of downtown Oviedo today.

After several years, George sold several of his sections here in Oviedo.

That led to the establishment of the Lake Jesup community, the predecessor to Oviedo.

>>When he had come down here from up north, what wasn't known initially is that his son, Lewis Powell, was one of the conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

He had been captured.

He was hung, and his body was buried, as were all the other conspirators.

Their bodies were buried in the naval headquarters in Washington.

Eventually, they dug up the bodies and the head of Lewis Powell, this guy's son, the conspirator, ended up in the Smithsonian.

We don't know why, but it did.

When the Smithsonian was cleaning out their attic, they had this skull.

They knew it was Lewis Powell.

So his mother is buried in Geneva.

So they brought the head back.

Buried it in Geneva.

The most important person was a immigrant Swede by the name of Andrew Aulin.

And he was asked by the federal government to please be the postmaster.

Well, they told hi you can't call this place Lake Jesup Community, you've got to give it a name.

So the name he chose was Oviedo because he felt Florida is a Spanish word.

We need a Spanish word for our town.

So he selected the Spanish word Oviedo.

And now, of course, we mangled that into Oviedo.

But the real name is Oviedo.

>>Ovied relied heavily on agriculture.

And to this day in downtow Oviedo, the Nelson and Company water tower stands as a symbol to the importance of the orange industry.

Several freezes in the 1890s hit the industry hard, driving out many of the orange businesses and leading to the rise of celery as a key product.

>>At those times in history there was a lot of freezes and so they wanted a different kind of crop.

So they tried potatoes and eventually they tried celery.

Sanford and Oviedo became called the celery capital of the world, and that's because they shipped more celery than anybody.

>>The orange industry rebuilt itself from the freezes and prospered for several decades.

That's until another devastating bou with cold weather in the 1980s.

>>That freeze of '83 came on Christmas.

The freeze of '89 came on Christmas.

I could sit in my bedroom and hear the fruit drop on the ground.

And it took a long time for me for Christmas to be the same since two Christmases were wiped out, you know, 50, 60 years of hard work.

Savings and hard work.

But those freezes just sped up the eventual sale and groves turning into real estate and homes for people to live in.

>>Oviedo, when it was incorporated in 1925, it was one square mile from the traffic light in the middle of town.

Oviedo was not a bedroom community.

If you worked here, you lived here.

Mr. BC Dodd was our commissioner, and at that time the commissioner got to say where the road money was spent in his district.

Dodd said he wanted to pave the road from the Oviedo city limits to the county line, which is McColloch.

It was dirt.

And the Sanford commissioner was named Herb Pope.

He jumped up and said, I don't kno what you want to pave that for.

Ain't nobody ever going to use it.

This is Alafay Trail we're talking about now.

That was the perception of Oviedo at that time.

There's a road to nowhere.

Nothing was ever going to happen out there.

♪♪♪ >>In the heart of Oviedo, you'll find a group of unexpected residents that take center stage.

Contributor John Busdeker shares their tale that goes beyond all the clucking sounds you'll hear around town.

>>Chickens, chickens, chickens.

They are everywhere here in Oviedo.

But how they got here now, that is a tall tale.

Get it?

As far bac as the 1800s, residents around Oviedo have owned livestock, including chickens.

But the roosters and hens yo see clucking around town today can likely be traced back to one man, Rick Burns.

>>Hi, I'm Rick Burns.

>>Back in the 1990s, Rick found a mother hen, her chicklets, and later, the rooster in a downtown parking lot.

[ROOSTER CROWS] He took care of the chickens eventually letting them all go.

However, many of those chickens stuck around and the chicken population around downtown Oviedo grew and grew.

Soon, the Oviedo chicken became a point of prid for the city and its residents.

Today, you can find chickens both live ones and not so live one almost everywhere around town.

Probably the best spot to see a real live chicken is right here at the East branc of the Seminole County Library.

Now, if you look really close, you can see one in the bush right here.

And if you don't spot one at the library, just remember that a chicken is always there to welcome you to Oviedo.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >>Something that's not widely known?

How Oviedo has quite the history of being a vibrant African-American community dating back to the late 19th century.

♪♪♪ >>And what happened with the former slaves, there was land to be had here in Florida, and so a lot of them came to Oviedo as descendants of former slaves.

And in particular in Oviedo the former slave was concerned about education.

That was always the the driving point, because they knew if their children were to have better lives, they had to be educated.

It was vibrant but not oppressive.

We were operating life just as the white citizens were but just in the separate area.

The people who ran the schools, the teachers, the principals, the ministers in the church were always telling u to strive for something higher.

Just because we were thought of as less than didn't mean we had to believe we were less than.

And so if I could say anything that I want people to know is that when you when you hear about the colored schools, don't feel sorry for us.

We had the greatest opportunities because we were looking forward.

We were looking upward.

♪♪♪ >>A few additional prominent families in the Oviedo area each opened a family busines nearly a century ago, and today each business is still family owned and operated.

Andrew Duda an his friends were from Slovakia.

They arrived in the United States with not a penny to their name, but there was a Slovakian community in Cleveland.

They went there, they earned their stripes.

They learned what they had to do, and they all got on a train and came down to Oviedo and they decided to plant celery.

>>It was not a success.

He went broke and gave up and moved away for a time, but then came back in 1926 and this time met with tremendous success.

Opening a sod farm, growing crops, increasing his land holdings until he became one of the area's largest landholders, a tremendous success story that continues today.

People in central Florida don't know but the chances are pretty good that when you buy sod it comes from the company that Andrew Duda created a century ago.

>>The Lukas family migrated to the largely empty rural flatlands near Oviedo back in 1912.

>>They came from an agrarian society and from Czechoslovakia.

So that's what they knew to do best was farm.

They pioneere with several other families and created the Slavic colonies, where they bought this parcel of land, basically sight unseen, to kind of move to the promised land.

I think the Lukas family and the Dudas, the Millers and the Jacobson's, they all pioneered this area.

But their central theme was their faith in God.

And they had their own church and they had their own services in the Slovak language, which was the original language.

But that was the vine, the connecting vine that kept everybody all together as families.

>>The first two generations were mostly into farming, but in the mid 1970s, it was the third generation of Lukas who saw the opportunity to sell plants and Lukas Nursery was born.

Now it's the fourth generation's turn to continue the family legacy.

>>One thing that was instilled in us growing up was how important family is, and it's really hard to describe how special it is to be a part of the family that has been here farming this land continuing on four generations and soon to be a fifth generation.

>>Did take a lot of pride in telling the family's story from coming here with nothing.

Literally, what they kind of had on their backs and putting blood, sweat and tears into the land and to now what's grown to be a successful business.

It is that tru American dream story come true.

We are definitely looking forward to seeing what the future entails, and I'm looking forward to being a part of it with the family.

>>A popular addition to Lukas nursery opened in 2004.

It features what the family calls flying flowers officially named the Butterfly Encounter.

♪♪♪ >>The butterfly encounter is a 4,000 square foot conservatory.

On a good day, we have anywhere from 3 to 500 live butterflies that are all native to the state of Florida.

We also house birds in here.

The birds that roam the ground are called Chinese button quail.

They're actually our cleaning crew.

They eat the insects and the dead butterflies.

But we also have some interesting varieties of finches that will fly throughout the air.

The butterfly encounter wa conceptualized by two friends, an entomologist named Mike Rich and Philip Lukas.

And they would go to Costa Rica and watch the butterflies and see the butterflies there.

And they decided there's nothing like this in central Florida.

It started out with 1,000 square foot little room and with a little shack on the outside.

And within two years it grew to 4,000 square feet.

It was nothing like we've ever had in Central Florida.

♪♪♪ The beauty about the butterfly encounter is that we have a roo called the Butterfly Refueling Station, and in that room is our interactive room.

Now, that species of butterfly in there is called the Painted Lady, and she literally is my most social butterfly.

How you get her on your fingers?

We encourage people to dip their finger in a little cup of juice, and you have to walk up to the butterfly and you nudge their feet.

What most people don't realize is that butterflies actually taste with their feet.

So once you nudge that butterfly with your finger, with that juicy finger, they taste that sweet juice on your finger.

They will unroll that proboscis, which is their fancy word for tongue.

And they will sip the juice right off your finger.

We also encourage that if you take that little butterfly, you can slide it right to the end of your nose and have a butterfly sit on your nose and see the joy on their children's faces when they have that butterfly crawling on their face.

It makes it all worth it.

It really does.

♪♪♪ I would hope that when people come here, they're getting back in touch with nature.

The butterfly encounter is a great place for families and people to com and just unplug from the world.

As soon as you walk in the doors, there's music playing, there's water playing, and it sets you in a whole nother mindframe.

It allows people to just step out of that their busy lives and just stop and appreciate the little things that nature has to offer and just for families to reconnect and for children to follow a bug and watch a caterpillar and watch a bird.

It's the greatest opportunity.

♪♪♪ >>Following the Civil War, this area of the States was home to travel by steamboats.

Today, folks step back in time visiting these waters on airboats.

♪♪♪ We're fortunate to visit Jason Rivera's office out here on Lake Jesup.

You are the general manager of The Black Hammock.

Tell me how many alligators are actually out here in Lake Jesup.

>>Well, welcome to Lake Jesup.

A little ove 13,000 alligators on this lake.

>>That's a lot of alligators in one lake alone.

How did they all get here?

Pretty much a lot of it is the area's growing as the communities are starting to be, you know, being built in the area.

They say any nuisance gators here in the area as well were kind of lik a big dumping ground for them.

It's just the location where it is.

You know, you get to see a lot of the alligators kind of survive right here.

>>Yeah.

And you mentioned nuisance alligators.

Give us some tips.

What do we not want to do should we come in contact with a gator in the wild?

>>Definitely.

If you see an alligator, don't go anywhere near it.

Kind of give it its space.

You definitely don't want to be feeding the alligators just for safety reasons.

Just stay away.

>>And Jason as we've approached some of the alligators on the water, we can see their nose.

We can see their eyes just above the water.

They like to disappear.

They're somewhat afraid of people, but you never want to feed them.

>>That's correct.

You know, you definitely want to.

The best experience, I think is come to a location like us.

You know, we have qualified captains.

We're all master captains licensed, come on an airboat tour.

And that way you can actually see the alligators in a in a safe environment and be able to see some big alligators out here.

You can see some large ones about anywhere from 12 to 15 feet.

>>Wow.

Really big sized ones.

And how long do the tours last?

>>We have 30 minute tours.

And then we also have one hour tours.

You don't need a reservation, but you're welcome to go on our website at TheBlackHammock.com.

And you're able to book a whole bunch of different packages, 30 minute tours, one hour tours.

We have private tours.

You can book a tour, a boat for up to six people.

And then we're also doing a family tour where it's like 12 to 16 people or so will be a private tour just for your family right here on Lake Jesup.

>>Anybody ever pop the question and make a wedding proposal on the boat?

We have had a couple of them, actually.

About a month and a half ago, somebody did get married right here on Lake Jesup.

Right on an airboat.

>>Fantastic.

And Jason besides just seeing alligators, there's a lot of other wildlife as something has just jumped here in the water, just behind the camera.

Tell me, what else can we see on the tour?

Definitely through our tours, we're going to take you out, take you right on Lake Jesup.

We've got a couple of trails that we'll bring you through.

Our captains are very, very knowledgeable on the alligators, very knowledgeable on the birds that we have.

Some of the birds that are very popular out here are like the blue heron, the anhinga.

We do get the Roseate Spoonbills out here, egrets.

So quite a bit of informatio that you'll get from a captain during our tours.

>>Jason, what's the craziest thing that you've ever seen out here while giving a tour?

>>The craziest thing actually, right after Hurricane Irma in 2017, that's the first time I saw manatees right on this lake.

And they came right from the Saint John's River.

They were here early in the morning and they swam right back out later that afternoon.

>>That's incredible.

Lots of great wildlife right here on Lake Jesup.

>>That is correct.

Yeah.

>>Jason, thank you.

>>Hey, no problem.

♪♪♪ >>There are many older historic homes in the Oviedo area with one on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Wheeler Evans House.

>>But when the home was built, it was built on Delco batteries.

There was not electricity in Oviedo at that time.

It also was built with solar panels for hot water.

And in the early 1950s, it was the first house in Oviedo that was air conditioned.

>>Another interesting feature about the house is something you don't find too often in Florida.

The house has a basement.

Not too far away in nearby Geneva is a rather unique location named Danville.

>>Welcome to Danville.

I'm the mayor.

We tried to build a downtown.

And the theory is, is that we have a downtown.

Downtown Danville, 1940s, looking downtown.

It has shops around the side.

It has a barbershop.

It has a city hall, it has O'Shaw's pub.

My last name is Shaw, and I was able to name the pub after myself.

I elected myself mayor.

Actually, my wife elected me.

She was the only other citizen in Danville, so she elected me.

>>We've become a very popular wedding and special event venue and we have some really unusual venues for people to stay at.

♪♪♪ The next one that we have is the Yurt.

It's done kind of a Mongolian style.

And we have two resident alpacas that live out back.

So you get to spend some time watching the alpacas.

>>Mongolia, 75% of th population still live in yurts.

That is their that is their basic home structure.

They're durable, they're unique.

They're interesting looking, and they're easy to live in.

♪♪♪ >>Then we have the man cave.

The man cave is really kind of what it says.

There's stuff hanging from the ceiling, a motorcycle and license plates everywhere.

But you have to kind of see it to to really get it.

♪♪♪ And then we have the treehouse, which is basically a yurt on a platform.

♪♪♪ >>The treehouse is my second yurt.

I put it on a platform.

The elevator, as far as I know, it's the only treehouse in the United States with an elevator.

The door of the elevator is actually a dark room booth door that I bought and building the elevator.

I said that would make a terrific tree trunk.

Keebler Elf Theory of getting up and down in the elevator.

I was looking for something to build a hot tub, and I ran across in Sanford there is a salvage company that they salvage airplanes.

I found the cowling of a D 10 jet engine and converted it into a hot tub.

As far as I know, it's the only hot tub made out of a jet engine.

This stage in my career is a retirement.

The opportunity to meet new people, individuals from all over the world.

And what a wonderful way to spend this period of my life.

I truly enjoy the opportunit to meet them and talk to them.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >>Oviedo has a rapidly growing reputation as a hotspot for pinball players.

If you're looking for a good game, head on down to the local bowling alley.

♪♪♪ >>Pinball is a big passion for me.

The biggest thing for me is that we're introducing it to a lot of new people.

So opening more people up to pinball.

That's the big passion for me.

That's the payoff.

Pinball's attraction, in my opinion this is a theater under glass.

There's a whole production going on.

There's a production of lights.

There's a production of sound.

♪♪♪ >>You know, they could they vote with their quarters.

So if a game isn't doing well, we pull it out.

We bring another game in.

>>Here, there' several different ways to play.

You could get a card and put credits on it, or you could play by the hour with unlimited play or play all day.

Or for history buffs you can do it the old fashioned way.

You can still put quarters inside these machines.

♪♪♪ >>You know, peopl look for pinball and we pop up.

I think that we have something special here with our pinball machines that's unlike anything you can do in this town.

And everyone from around here is really appreciating it.

Well, that's going to wrap it up for the Oviedo edition of Florida Road Trip.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Scott Fais.

I invite you to join us again next week as we continue our ride through Florida's history.

Until then, safe travels, everyone.

Now I'm going back to work.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ >>This program is brought t you in part by the Paul B.

Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation a proud partner of WUCF, and th Central Florida Community.