>>This program is brought to you in part by the Paul B. Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation, a proud partner of WUCF and the Central Florida community.

>>On this additional Florida Road Trip, we're heading into Northeast Florida to explore the history of a county shaped by service, hard work, and a deep sense of community.

>>This camp was renowne for being able to train soldiers for a more traditional European style environment or a more Pacific theater, a swampy area.

>>Where a man known for his retail stores tried to build something entirely different.

>>If they planted crops, raised some livestock for two years, that land was theirs.

>>And where generations still gather to celebrate agriculture, community and the people.

>>This isn't Tasha's fair.

It's the people's fair.

>>Fro training grounds to traditions.

Florida Road Trip is taking the scenic route through Clay County.

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

Clay County's past is layered.

Shaped by the river and then generations of communities which built homes that then turned into traditions.

This is one place where history is still alive.

>>We want to start through the earliest history, we had Timucua Native Americans living here.

>>Their presence is still visible in the archeological sites throughout the county, including some with colonial influence.

There's numerous mounds and middens all over the county, and this is something not a lot of people know about Clay County, but we actually have a Spanish fort in our county along the banks of the Saint Johns River.

It's called Fort San Francisco de Pupo.

>>By the mid 1800s the population had grown enough to form a new county, and its leaders chose a name that would honor a nationally known statesman.

>>There's about ten other counties in the United States named Clay County, and most of them are after Henry Clay.

Henry Clay had nothing to do with Clay County.

Never came here, wasn't related to anybody from here.

But at the time when they named the county, the Whig Party was very popular in Clay County.

And so they just said, well we'll name it after Henry Clay.

Even though none of them actually ever met him.

>>Not long after the Civil War, Clay County gained national attention for something completely different: Green Cove Springs.

>>The big thing that happens after the Civil War is medical tourism.

The spring at Spring Park becomes a magnet for all of these people from up north.

And Doctor Applegate builds the first hotel in Green Cove.

And the other big hotel is in Magnolia, and they're all capitalizing on come down here during the winter.

If you're consumptive o if you have any kind of disease, you drink this water, this mineral water, it's going to make you better.

So they were actually bottling it and selling it up north.

It was a huge influx of tourism.

So from about the 1870s to about the mid first decade of the 1900s.

It was tourism.

>>Green Cove Springs thrived as a popular winter retreat.

Bustling with visitors and grand hotels.

>>Today, its spring-fed pool continues to attract locals.

Bridging the past and the present.

Yet another industry also played a hand in shaping life in Clay County.

>>Really agriculture played an important role in Clay County history as man other counties in this country.

>>There's one family that really stands out when you talk about dairy farming in Clay County.

They started small and then grew into one of the most well-known names in local agriculture.

We had the Gustafson family that was here.

They came as indentured individuals working for people here in Green Cove.

And Mama Gustafson known as Mama Gus.

She had an old cow in the backyard just several blocks from here.

And she milk the cow every day.

>>That small operation gre dramatically over the decades.

>>By 1970, I believe they had about 6,000 head of milk cows that they processed every day.

But sadly, all that is no in the past, the dairy was sold.

>>The rise and fall of Gustafson dairy mirrors Clay County's broader shift from farmland to residential community.

>>World War Two brought the next major transformation.

>>During the Second World War, we had Camp Blanding, and here in Green Cove, we had Lee Field that trained Navy pilots.

>>After the war, we had the mothball fleet.

The mothball fleet is like, gee, we've built all of these ships and destroyers and destroyer escorts, the Tin Can Navy.

What do we do with all these ships?

We don't need them now anymore.

Right?

That' what the government's thinking.

And they store them here at Green Cove Springs.

They built these huge piers thousands of feet long.

That lasted until 1964, whe Lyndon Johnson became president.

He decided that Texas needed the mothball fleet.

>>As Clay County grew, a ne town emerged: Keystone Heights.

Shaped by a family with a clear vision for its future.

>>In the Florida land boom of the 1920s, John Lawrence was attracted to this region, and he was originally from Pennsylvania, so together with his three brothers, he formed the Lawrence Development Company, and they set about making this community.

They named it Keystone Heights after the state.

Pennsylvania, its nickname was the Keystone State.

That's how we received our name.

>>Creative promotion brought seasonal residents seeking a warmer climate and a sense of culture.

>>He developed postcards and brochure and really publicized the area.

And so people started to come into the area of Keystone from all of these advertisements that he had put out.

And the people that were coming originally to Keyston were friends of the Lawrences.

They were educate and influential with the arts, music.

He was elated when Doctor George Mead, who was from New York, he had just become the president of the Chautauqua.

and he moved and purchase a home here in Keystone Heights.

So Lawrence was very excited about that, because with Doctor Mead, he then brought the Chautauqua to Keystone, and Keystone became the Chautauqua City of the South.

So with the Chataqua event that was a social movement in the early 20th century.

It was like a sort of like a PBS special.

They brought different speakers in.

Of course, this is before radio, and so the only way people had knowledge about what was going on with the arts culture was newspapers.

And so with the Chautauqua events, they could actually com to an area and hear the speakers firsthand, learning abou what was happening in the world domestically.

>>With visitors arriving for culture and conversation.

Keystone Heights needed a place to bring everyone together.

One of the main social places in Keystone Heights, and one of the most important buildings besides the building that we're in right now, the historic pavilion was the Keystone Heights Inn.

It had 38 rooms at the time.

In the 20s, the keystone in had steamed heat.

It had inside plumbing, which, of course, you know doesn't seem like anything now.

But back in the 20s, that was a big deal.

And the rooms were spacious.

It had a big dining room.

There was a big front porch that everyone could sit out in the afternoon and drink lemonade and tea.

Iced tea.

It would overlook the lake.

It had a putting green out front.

>>The Inn was severely damaged by a fire in 1954, after which it sat abandoned before the remnants of the structure were all torn down.

Still today, Keystone Heights continues to preserve its heritage, much like the rest of Clay County.

>>There's one place that tells the story of Clay County's history, records, and preservation, all from one spot.

The Clay County Historic Triangle.

>>Two of the county's oldest buildings that the county owns, are here at the triangle.

The triangle is actually shaped like a triangle, hence the name.

So we have the 1890 courthouse and the 1894 jail.

>>The historic triangle is one spot where visitors can step inside and explore.

>>We have the museu got here with the train museum.

Clay County Historical Society runs that.

The public is allowed to come visit the cellblock here.

[DOOR SLAMS] >>Inside the archives, find records documenting generations of life in Clay County.

>>Profanity, drinking, stealing of cows.

You know, cattle rustling.

And this one right here.

Somebody dropped a dime on Nathan because he went to jail for adultery.

>>The Clay County Historical Triangle offers visitors a rare hands on connection to the past.

>>The main thing, I think, that separates Clay County from perhaps other area are the people that live here.

There's a really communit that runs throughout all of us.

And preserving that and continue that on this part of the challenge that we all have in maintaining history.

♪♪ >>For more than 80 years.

Camp Blanding has shaped soldiers lives.

It got its start as a National Guard training pos on the shores of Kingsley Lake.

And then during World War Two it grew into one of the largest posts.

>>Camp Blanding comes from a longer history with the National Guard here in Florida.

So in the early par of the 20th century up to 1939, the guard had a post over on the Saint Johns River fairly close to Jacksonville at a place called the Black Point Military Reservation.

They had over there a piece of propert that was officially Camp Foster.

And in 1939 that portion of the Black Point Military Reservation is now part of Naval Air Station Jacksonville.

>>With th Navy expanding in Jacksonville, the Florida National Guard needed a new home.

They found it in Clay County with Camp Blanding.

In 1940, the War Department officially took over the camp.

>>We went from 30,000 acres to 150,000 acres.

The company named Starrett Brothers and Eken got the contract to build the federal facilities.

In the space of 90 days, they built 10,258 buildings on this post.

>>The sprawling facility gets its name from Major General Albert H. Blanding, who is one of the highest ranking officers to come out of the Florida National Guard.

Almost overnight, Camp Blandin became a massive wartime city.

Chapels, theaters, and even the largest hospital in the South filled the camp.

At its busiest, more than 65,000 soldiers trained here all at the same time.

>>This camp was renowne for being able to train soldiers for a more traditional European style environment, or a more Pacific theater, a swampy area.

So this post was unique in the sense that it was able to train soldiers for both of the kinds of environment that they ultimately faced.

>>More than 850,000 soldiers trained at Camp Blanding during World War two.

The people working at the museum today make sure that none of these stories fade, while Camp Blanding remains an active training facility.

>>To make sure that its story survives.

It doesn't die.

Not just Camp Blanding's story but all the men that have come through here for training and what they went on to do, and that's kind of what we try to focus on here, is to keep their memories alive and their stories alive.

>>Some visitors arrive, hoping to learn what their relatives experienced while training here.

>>We see a lot of families for veterans that come back, and the veteran's passed away and the family goes, you know, we don't.

Dad, granddad, Uncle Joe never really talk much about what he did.

And we're trying to track that down now.

And so we try to help them as much as we can.

>>The museum helps paint a picture of life for soldiers preparing to head overseas.

>>We've tried to focus more on showing what life was like for the soldiers, the equipment they used, the uniforms they wear, and particularly with the weapons.

We have a fairly extensive weapons collection here.

>>There was another side of Camp Blanding during the war, one many visitors are surprised to discover.

>>Camp Blanding actually had two prisoner of war compounds.

There was a German navy compound, which was pretty small, about 250 prisoners, and the German army compound was much larger.

Between 1,000 and 1,200 prisoners.

At the end of the war, there were almost 7,000 German prisoners of war in Florida alone.

>>Camp Banding also trained Japanese American soldiers during World War Two.

Nisei recruits were second generation Japanese-Americans who were offered the opportunity to enlist in the United States Army from internment camps.

Camp Blanding served as an infantry replacement training center responsible for training these recruits.

In 1944 Nisei soldiers were integrated into the training companies at Camp Banding.

Today, Camp Blanding remains a joint training center used by troops from across the country.

The museum stands as one of the few remaining World War Two buildings on the property.

Surrounded by tanks, artillery, aircraft and other artifacts from the war.

>>We set our units to all of the major operating theaters.

We sent our replacement soldiers to all of the major operating units.

Again, it's not just that this is such a large site.

It's the number of men that came through here and trained at Camp Blanding during the war.

>>There's a famous quote Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation, and I always tell folks, that' an overwhelming understatement.

The more you dig into what these men and women did during the war, not just for our country, but for for the whole planet.

And it's just it was way beyond just a great generation.

>>Camp Blanding stand as a reminder of the generations who trained here, served abroad, and forever changed the course of history in Florida and beyond.

♪♪ Quietly tucked away in the woods where the Black Creek meets the Saint Johns River awaits a quiet respite that has welcomed generations.

Today, it's affectionately known as Camp Chow.

The camp began during one of the country's more challenging eras.

Yet leaders saw the opportunity and built a place where young people could gather and learn.

>>Camp Chowenwaw Park started as the first permanent camp for the Duval County Girl Scout Council.

They opened for their first session in July 1st of 1933.

There are three of the Council women that were credited for its creation.

As soon as they heard about being able to get free labor from the government, they jumped right on the opportunity.

Herbert Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

This was a progra that loaned money to businesses and banks, and would provide the fundin for the labor to build the camp.

>>At the time, it was said that they had about every unskilled and skilled laborer in Jacksonville working here some days, over 150 men at a time.

>>There were efforts to tur that patch of forest into a Girl Scout experience for more than 70 years.

But Camp Chowenwaw sits on land with a story stretching back thousands of years.

>>Archeological surveys have found that it was inhabite back in the Mississippian period of the indigenous peoples of Clay County.

Additional evidence goes even farther back to the woodland period where lithic flakes were found, and suggesting that it was used as a hunting camp.

>>Even the name reflects influence and tradition.

>>The Girl Scouts at the time liked to use indigenous word to describe areas of the camp.

They believed that the wor Chowenwaw meant little sister.

Later on they would find out from it the Seminole Nation, a languag expert for the Seminole Nation, that it actually translates to older sister of a man.

But it has always been known as the Sisters Camp.

>>The community built Camp Chowenwaw and preserve the facility for decades.

>One that really stood out to m was a neighbor of the property, and he had been holding on to Swedish granite.

They were ship ballast that he was hoping to use himself to build on his own property.

But they had presented a need and he was happy to give it to them.

In my researc and talking to the Clay County Historical Society, they informed me that they actually came fro a shipwreck in the nearby creek.

>>That generosity helped save one of the camp's most iconic buildings.

>>The Big cabin is the only structure that exists when the camp opened in 1933.

It was close to being demolished.

Thankfully, Ted Pappas, an architect, recommended that the cabin be restored instead of demolished.

With his help, we still have the big cabin today.

When Clay Count purchased the property in 2006, the goal was simple protect its history and preserve the experience.

>>The physical characteristics of the camp have not changed.

There's been no development of the park since Clay County purchased the camp.

You're getting a very similar experience as the Girl Scouts had.

>>Visitors can explore rustic cabins, treehouses, forest trails, and historic waterways.

Camp Chowenwaw is at the confluence of Black Creek and the Saint Johns River.

Black Creek goes into Clay County around 30 miles, including the South Fork and the North Fork.

So this was a major route not just for Native Americans traveling the land, but also was a source of transportation for agricultural products.

And then when the girl Scouts own the property, this was a high point of recreation for them.

>>Education remains core mission of the modern park.

I recommend people going t the Pawpaw Nature Center there.

They can learn all about the flora and fauna that can be found in Clay County, and all the amazing natural communities that are featured in Clay County.

And of course, come to the Chowenwaw Centuries Exhibit where you can see one of our canoes here that was found nearby in Keystone Heights.

It's from the Late Archaic period.

They estimated anywhere between 5 and 7000 years old.

>>Nearly a centur after the first campers arrived, Camp Chow still welcomes anyone looking to connect with the outdoors.

Just as generations before once did.

I think Camp Chow is a great story for conservation and preservation, and making sure that people get out and are enjoying nature as they were during the time of the Girl Scouts.

>>It's hard t imagine what this place would be if Clay County had not purchased the property and preserve it.

♪♪ >>Orange Park has always embraced new beginnings.

This area used to be covered by orange groves.

That' how the community got its name.

And although the orange trees have sinced vanish, the house behind me serves as a reminder to the legacy The entire Orange Park was Laurel Grove Plantation.

that one family created.

This had been a plantation.

The entire Orange Park was Laurel Grove Plantation.

It kind of fell into disrepair after the war was over, and reconstruction moved in and into the community comes Washington Gano Benedict of the Florid Winter Home Improvement Company.

They planted 250 orange trees on every lot, marketed it to people up north to come down and you had a ready made income.

You could build your house.

You already have an income waiting for you.

And so that was orange tree until the 1880s when they froze.

And that ended that industry.

>>Following the freeze.

The town survived, driven by new businesses, tourism and a growing population.

>>Washington Gan Benedict had back up industries.

There was a palmetto industry where they were making things from Palmetto Leaves, and there was a moss factory where they were stuffing stuff into furniture, cushions of Spanish moss and sending that out.

So he had all of that, even patented his palmetto.

So he was very ingenious.

And he built a huge hotel an had tourism as another industry.

There was great wood resources out here.

So with the wood resources in addition to it, the the oranges kind of could go.

And it was all right.

>>By the early 1900s, Orange Park found itself evolving and the Clark family would soon influence its direction.

>>They had a business in downtown Jacksonville.

They looked around and they saw the son was wearing knickers and and velvet and.

No, no we want this boy to go barefoot and go fishing and hunting and all that stuff.

And so they bought 30 acres out here in Orange Park.

And Mr.

Clark started the pecan grov on top of his plumbing business.

Then on top of all that, mayor of Orange Park.

>>Their 1912 home still stands today, safe from demolition and preserved as a public treasure.

Step inside and you're walking into the birthplace of Orange Park' very first Baptist congregation.

>>Carrie Clarke in this very house started the first Baptist Church of Orange Park on her porch.

She started a Sunday school.

She actually went around and picked kids up and brought them to the Clarke House porch.

And they had Sunday school with that piano.

She got the adults involved.

People started coming in.

Imagine this roo filled this space with people.

The dining room and the porch.

You can open those windows on the porch and everybody can sing in harmony.

The Clarke's influence could be found everywhere from the women's club to the garden club, to community reforms that helped shape the modern town.

They did so much for this community.

When they were living here, in the beginning, there was no law about putting your pigs, goats, anything behind a fence.

They were all over the place, which was becoming a health hazard.

And you have to remember that these women couldn't vote, but they still managed to get legislation passed through their husbands, to get the animals behind fences.

And that was a big health boom.

They did these things for the community.

They helped feed the childre at Orange Park Elementary School that produced the first hot meals in the school.

Orange Park is the oldest, I believe, still functioning school in all of Clay County.

They had an intuition for the right choices.

It didn't have to be easy.

It just had to be useful enough to the community to spend the time and do it.

And they they did not chance on that.

Anything that needed their time.

They were more than generous.

During the Great Depression.

They were well off compared to a lot of people.

And all you had to do was knock on her kitchen door and Mrs.

Clark would pass you a plate.

You wouldn't even see who you were.

The model that can be share with the lifestyle of the Clark family is one any family would want to mimic today.

They did not put themselves first.

They were generous to their neighbor.

They genuinely cared abou each other when someone was ill.

They were there with food.

It didn't matter who they were or whether they knew them or not, because it's just what you do in a small community.

If you hear that story saying, I could do that, that stuff I can do I can make the community better.

I can be that kind of a giving person because it is so rewarding.

>>Visitors come for tour or to feel a sense of nostalgia that brings the past close enough to touch.

It is an unusual construction.

They had one son.

They knew they were only going to have on son, so they made it spacious.

When the family left, the didn't take the piano with them, and they didn't take those heavy furniture pieces in the dining room either, because it was just too hard to move it, I think, and we benefit from that.

And we have received back from the family a few other pieces, and people in the community have then filled in the rest with donations.

It is a snapshot of Orange Park community.

Some of them have names on them.

There's a model of the May Garner ship over there that was hand don by one of our members to scale.

There's a lot of love in here, and that's all practical.

So when we talk abou the construction of this place, practicality is the number one thing differ from every other house in 1912 that has small rooms with a fireplace in every room.

It's wide open with on fireplace in the entire house.

Two bedrooms in a house this size is very hard to believe.

The bedroom for the boy is like three bedroom we would have in an apartment.

The way this house is laid out, if you look at the windows, there are windows everywhere you look.

It was 12 years before electricity came.

They didn't need it.

They worked around it.

A lot of people have never seen a kerosene heater.

Even adults are asking what is that which makes me feel so old.

Because I remember from my childhood.

This radio catches their attention, not just because it leans fro the work that needs to be done on the foundation, but because that whole thin you can fit in your watch today.

>>Most people when they come in Clarke House remember their grandma, and they'll go in the kitchen and they'll see that state of the art in 1912 sink that a plumbe put in for himself or his wife, and think my grandma had that exact same sink.

And it makes you nostalgic and you miss your grandma, but you got your grandma because you get to be here with her.

>>The house stands as a reminde that a community grows strongest when its people ope their doors, and their hearts.

♪♪ >>Cash or credit?

One Clay County town's visio reflects a gentleman whose name used to be above thousands of American department stores.

James Cash Penney didn't want to build retail here.

Rather, community.

>>He opened his first store in Florida in Jacksonville in 1922, and he also found out that there was going to be an auction for a farm land coming up in about two weeks.

He got 120,000 acres of land for $400,000.

>>James Cash Penney may have been known for his department stores, but his childhood inspired his dream.

Formed by years spent working the land.

>>He grew up on a 400 acre farm.

His dad was clergy, and he said to him one night, you know, you have got to get a job, because even when he was eight, they were telling him he needed to buy his own shoes because he couldn't afford to buy shoes for everybody.

And he cut grass and he fed the pigs.

He did mak a little bit of money that way.

But then he grew watermelons.

And when the fair came to Hamilton he put his rickety table outside at eight years of age and sold his watermelons.

And his father couldn't find him all day.

And when he eventually caught up with J.C., he said, you can't do this.

All our friends spent a whole year saving up the money to have a table in the fair.

However, he did make enough money to buy himself shoes and a new suit at eight.

>>Hard work never left Penny, and he carried his work ethic into his visio for the land that he purchased.

>>He came here to farm.

He really thought he was going to get to be a good big farmer man.

And I think the soil looked so inviting on the top that he wanted to try it, because our soil differs, but it is mostly sand.

I think that he wanted to share something that he went through himself as a child growing up.

I think he wanted to share his wealth and see if people could build from there.

>>In 1922, Penney and his associates registered 10,000 acres as Long Branch City.

He invited farmers to claim 40 acre tracts with just one stipulation.

>>If they planted crops and raised some some livestock for two years, that land was theirs.

No payment.

It was just for them.

>>But not all families worked the land in the same way.

A separate neighborhood known as New Hope grew from a different experience.

>>I knew that the opportunity for people of color to get land was not to say very easy.

It cost somebody something, but it was possible because everyone around that was doing sharecropping.

They were given the opportunity to buy land, not just actually taking, you know, how sharecroppers were in on the treatment of it was that every time you went to pay your bill, you had more bill added on, an so you never paid off the bill.

But J.C.

Penney was very different.

He actually allowed them to pay off their land and purchase a home.

But the farming as a whol didn't work because of the soil.

And so I guess he kind of threw in the towel on a little bit.

But by then the people that were here had homes.

In 1921, people of color, black people owned homes.

And that's different.

It is very different.

And you read in history people that own homes as a as a race, not in this area.

They didn't they didn't own them.

>>The two communities grew side by side, often helping each other, and the area became known as New Hope.

It's not official.

It's not where no one went to the county and said, this is going to be the name of the community.

It became New Hope, and that's what everyone refers to it New Hope that you're not desperate.

We're not down and out, and we're going to alway have new hope in this community.

>>Back in Penney's central community, the founder undertook something unusual for the era: a retirement community named Memorial Home Community.

>>They decided that they would start out with missionaries and ministers and YMCA workers who did not have much in the way of resources when they retired.

So he built homes for all of them.

Cottages.

For several years after he paid for all their groceries until they could get their feet on the ground.

>>Agricultur grew here, too, helped in part by the young cattle hands who learned the trade.

>>Beef cattle was big because of Mr.

Penny.

There was the Penny Gwynne Corporation and a lot of that history.

There were what they call cracker cattle.

And these cracke cattle came in with the Spanish.

And the good thing about these cracker animals.

They were tough.

This was a rugged area.

You have to look at a forest when you drive around here.

Look at the most dense forest.

You could think and think o cattle being in those forests.

And think of men having t go in there and bring them out.

My dad worked for Mr.

Penney when he was about 16.

He was a range rider with older men, and they would bring in all these cattle.

>>Back then, moving cattle wasn't all that easy.

It took a sharp crack of a whi to keep the livestock in line.

The sound made by the whip became so iconic that people who worked the herds earne a new nickname Florida Crackers.

>>Those cow whips, the cracking sound.

It was not to hurt the animal.

They had to drive the animal out of these palmetto.

That was a tool in that noise over the top of that cows head to drive.

>>In 1927, the state legislature chartered the city as the Town of Penney Farms.

When the Great Depression hit in 1929, Penney sold most of his holdings, except for 200 acres he deeded to the Memorial Home community.

Through it all, one thing has never changed: the people.

>>If I live somewhere else and came here, what I would see is that there's there's no paper on the ground here in penny farms.

We don't have trash on the ground.

I can walk around here.

Nobody's saying anything to me but hello or whatever and go to the post office if it's not closed.

And even the postmaster that doesn't live out here has that same spirit, because they know they have to get it, because they won't get it.

It's like it'll b so many complaints until you do get that kindred spirit going on.

So I think that would be a envy of the other small towns is get with it.

Relax.

Be kind.

Clean your streets be nice.

>>I thought the spirit of Penny farms is very good.

>>People were always willing to help out other people.

Volunteering was one of the big things that Penney asked for.

And we can find people who volunteer.

>>In 1971, the community reorganized as the self-sustaining Penny Retirement Community.

In 1999 the community earned its place on the National Register of Historic Places, preserving Jane Cash Penny' legacy of service and community for future generations.

♪♪ >>Each spring, something special visits Clay County.

It's loud, can sometimes smell like hay, it tastes pretty sweet.

And it's a lot of fun.

But at its heart, the Clay County Agricultural Fair is much more than that.

This is a tradition where families gather to preserve the county's past.

>>The roots, as far as historian.

What I have discovere and what I've lived through too, and been involved in, was through Cracker Day and through organizations like Clay County Cattlemen and through people like Mr.

Jesse Godbold.

He had the vision.

>>This same group of people got together and determined that we needed to have a fair and started out, and it started out small, obviously, it was a four day fair.

>>The early focus on cattle, farming, and community never went away.

It grew alongside Clay County itself.

>>Today, one o the most unique places to visit at the fair is someplace that folks don't expect.

The early Florida villag where you can step back in time to see Florida as it was, well more than a century ago.

>>You can see anything in here from biscuits being cooked on a stove.

>>There's some baby biscuits in there if you want another one.

>>Yes, please.

Thank you ma'am.

>>The collard greens are being cooked in big pots to somebody making cow whip.

You can hear the gospel music in the church.

Lessons are going on in the schoolhouse.

>>This isn't a reenactment.

These are real buildings, real tools and real stories.

>>Early Florida village.

I think it i probably the hidden gem to me.

It's so relaxing.

You'll have porches you can sit on.

There's places you can chill out and they can just kind of amble through, get some history.

>>I lived in this house till I was 18 years old.

>>I can remember not having electricity.

I can remember doing homework by a lamp.

And we cook with a wood stove.

And that's the way we did that.

>>For many, Early Florida Village is more than history.

It's family.

And from the very beginning, the fair's mission has always been education.

>>The whole goal was to make agriculture get it better known in Clay County, because Clay County was starting to grow and you were starting to get a lot of people moving in that didn't realize, you know, what the agriculture was and how important it was, and even today, how important it is even in this county.

>>And that message is still key today.

>>We're losing farmland across Florida, especially here in Clay County.

So it's extremely important to educate people about the importance of agriculture.

>>I really hope that the understand the toil of the land.

I hope they understand the sacrifice of where our country and Florida has came from.

If I can teach my children my grandchildren what my father, what my grandfather went through, what these dairy farmer went through seven days a week that they had to milk cows twice a day.

We got less than 2% feeding America.

If we can just teach them a little bit about going back to their roots and maybe growing something, maybe if it's a small garden, they can grow in their backyard because it can be done.

>>And the fair runs almost entirely on volunteer power.

>>We're one of the only fair that is truly a volunteer fair.

We have four paid staff members, myself and three others.

Everybody else you meet out here are all volunteers.

We have over 2,000 that volunteer here at the Clay County Fair.

Where else can you g that it's truly volunteer power?

This community really supports this fair.

They take their vacation time to come work this fair, which is something.

When I first started here, I thought it was wild.

I'm like, they take vacation?

Like they don't want to go to Key West or to the beach.

No, they come to the Clay County Fair.

Once you volunteer here, it's in your blood.

>>It's like family to me.

It is.

I mean, to me, this is my school house.

You may lose a lot of things, but you don't have to lose your memories.

>>The people who show up take pride in this tradition and then pass it on to make more memories every year.

>>I hope they think back and like, wow, that was fun.

It was a clean, safe, fair and I learned something.

I hope that they continu passing it down from generation to generation.

[WHIP CRACKS] >>How difficult is this?

>>Not that difficult.

Throw real strong, and you're gonna want to pop forward.

Real quick.

[TALKING SPED UP] I caught myself under it.

The people really make this a fair.

I mean, it's the people's fair.

I'm the face of the fair.

But this isn't Tasha's fair.

This is the people's fair.

I'm just in the seat to make things happen.

>>A fair built by volunteers, rooted in agriculture and powered by the people of Clay County.

From riverbanks to fairgrounds.

Clay County's story is told through its people.

Here, history just isn't learned.

It's lived.

That's going to wrap it up for this edition of Florida Road Trip.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Scott Fais.

We'll see you down the road.

But first, safe travels everyone.

♪♪ >>This program is brought to you in part by the Paul B. Hunter and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation, a proud partner of WUCF and the Central Florida community.

♪♪