A history of Dunnellon,
since 1887
Postcards, papers and photographs of Dunnellon from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Dunnellon was founded in 1887, two years before the 1889 discovery of phosphate in the area. The community was named after, John F. Dunn, an early settler who worked in the railroad industry. The City of Dunnellon was platted in 1890, and officially incorporated as a municipality in 1891. The subsequent mining boom, the first of its kind in Florida, lasted until the early 1910s, but the city's nickname is still known as "Boomtown". The original mining took place in and around the Rainbow River (then called Blue Run,) using the river's natural flow to transport phosphates. One of the original mining pits is now called the 'Blue Cove' subdivision. Phosphate industry operations began to shift south to the Polk County area, and by the 1960s, Dunnellon's last mine closed. Dunnellon survived the bust period, unlike other nearby phosphate communities that became ghost towns, such as Romeo, LeR…
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Dunnellon’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewShallow pit phosphate mine, 1890: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Dunnellon
See all 2 →
Dunnellon, decade by decade
1930s
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Shallow pit phosphate mine (1890) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (2) and the Library of Congress (3). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.