Enterprise Prospers

In 1867, Elijah Watson opened a dry goods store to serve the 486 people in the area. Five years later William Thayer and John Sauls opened a competing store at the corner of DeBary Avenue and Main Street (shown).

By the early 1880s, Enterprise boasted a county courthouse, county jail, post office, the Brock House Hotel and a handful of smaller hotels and boardinghouses, several dry goods stores, a drug store, real estate firms, a jewelry store, sawmill, and a newspaper, The Enterprise Herald. The arcade building shown here was built in the 1880s and at various times housed a jelly factory and the Children’s Home.