Hidden under weeds at a fork in Old Cheney Highway are concrete remains of a sign that once greeted all who entered Bithlo.
It said: “Bithlo: City of the Future.”
For those visiting the town for the first time during the 1920s, the message was palpable. The east Orange County town — now a community of mobile homes and about 4,500 residents — had a pump gas station, post office, power plant and train station. It was a booming center for people who raised cattle and hogs and worked the orange groves.
“This was a cattle community back in the early days,” said longtime Bithlo resident Fred Dietrich, 72, who once owned 200 cows and 2,900 acres. “We were just old Cracker cow people.”
Land was cheap and attractive to people who wanted a chance to leave Orlando and other more urban areas. Orlando residents were moving to Bithlo in the 1920s for a reason Northerners move to Orlando now: They wanted the independence that comes with being a part of something new.
“At one time this was a country out here where a person had a little freedom,” said Dietrich, who was born in Orlando and has lived in Bithlo for more than 40 years. “There weren’t so many people telling you what to do.”
The boom busted during the Depression of the 1930s, and the face of Bithlo changed drastically. Many families left for better jobs in Orlando and other Florida towns. Some moved to other growing farm communities.
A few like the Dietrichs stayed on.
Fred and Florence Dietrich, 72, head one of about four families that have lived in Bithlo since the 1920s. Like most Bithlo residents, they live in a mobile home. So do their five children — all in separate homes on 500 acres of Dietrich land.
“It’s a little homestead, you might say,” said Dietrich.
There are few homesteads in Bithlo today. Development is stretching eastward, bringing strip malls and new subdivisions.
To assist commuters from east Orange County, the East-West Expressway is being extended east of Alafaya Trail. Bithlo residents say this would make traveling easier for them but also could “dump” more traffic into their community.
“It might help or it might hurt,” said Bithlo resident Linda Courtney, 42.
Residents are concerned about development’s effect. They say growth is changing land use in Bithlo from homes on several acres to crowded subdivisions and mobile home parks.
“The more growth you have the less land you have,” said Carmen Shaw, a member of the Bithlo Betterment Committee, a voluntary group that provides a forum for residents to express their concerns. “It’s such an environmentally sensitive area.”
Such fears prompted many residents to oppose a 775-acre subdivision that Orange County commissioners approved in January.
Cypress Lakes will add 2,327 homes to Bithlo and double the population when it is completed in eight to 10 years. Commissioner Lou Treadway, who led support for the project, said it will solve drainage problems, provide water and sewer lines, improve several roads and offer better zoning than the current “mishmash of building activity” in Bithlo.
But residents worried about the effect of the project on wetlands. They said the Miami developers wanted to squeeze too many houses on the site.
Despite the imminent changes, residents have maintained Bithlo’s rural character. It is through ties with families like the Dietrichs that Bithlo has retained its identity as a community of hard-working people who prefer little government and lots of land.
When non-residents ask, “Where are you from?” Shaw does not say Orlando, even though it is a well-known city.
“I say I’m from Bithlo,” said Shaw, who with her husband owns the community’s only service station. “I always had a lot of pride in this community.”
Bithlo stopped functioning as a city in the 1940s, when a mayor and town council were not elected during World War II. In the 1960s, the town became a predominantly low-income mobile home community because of the low cost of land and the increasing number of construction jobs in the area.
Since then, Bithlo has been the butt of many derogatory jokes. Shaw said residents are tired of fighting the Bithlo stereotype: a redneck town with junkyards and junky mobile homes.
“I really dislike the label,” Shaw said. “There’re” some extremely well-educated people and lots of hard-working people.”
Few Bithlo residents regret becoming part of Orange County. Most said they could not live without the county’s garbage, police and fire services.
When Linda Courtney’s house caught fire in 1976 it took a small volunteer fire department all night to put out the flames. Courtney said although she does not want Bithlo to lose its identity, she feels secure under the protection of the county agencies.
In 1977 Bithlo became extinct as a city when the Florida Legislature dissolved its charter. The ruling changed little in Bithlo. There was no municipal building to close, no city council meetings to stop attending.
But few residents have forgotten the removal of a simple green sign on State Road 50 and County Road 419 by the Department of Transportation.
“I kind of hated to see that sign go down,” Courtney said. “You really just have to guess that you’re here.”
Next week: Gotha.
