GATEWAY TO PORT ORANGE

In 1866, John Hawks established the Florida Land & Lumber Company and invited freedpeople to settle and work here. Hawks eventually named the area Port Orange. The company failed, but a segregated community developed here along the Halifax River. It prospered due to the intracoastal waterway extension, a shell road to Daytona, and a wooden bridge built across the river in 1906. That bridge became the gateway to Port Orange. At a bridgetender’s house on this corner, travelers paid a toll to cross. In 1932, a hurricane destroyed the bridge, and the tollhouse site later became Dave’s Dock, a bait and tackle shop. In 1954, a drawbridge replaced the original bridge. By that time, the town was famous for oysters, with Port Orange Oyster Company and Sands Fish & Oyster harvesting for restaurants such as Gardner’s Seafood and Marko’s Drive-In. Marko’s, one mile south of the bridge, was the first restaurant run by the Galbreath family. They bought the former Dave’s Dock in 1978, renaming it “Aunt Catfish,” after a local retiree, Rosena McCormack, who visited Marko’s daily. In 1990, the drawbridge was replaced by a high bridge, which the Florida Legislature named for Congressman William V. Chappel, Jr.