In addition to the Welcome Center & History Museum, the Osceola County Historical Society also operates an outdoor museum called Pioneer Village. Over the next few blog posts that are not part of the Life of Paul series I will be introducing you to some of the people who’s lives are honored and referenced in our Village.

Pioneer Village does not represent any particular settlement but rather just depicts what a settlement might have been like around 1900. It is comprised of two different types of buildings: replicas and restorations. The replicas were built less than a decade ago as copies of buildings which used to (or in some cases still do) exist in Osceola County, Florida. Many of these replicas represent structures associated with the small frontier town of Narcoossee, which lies about 14 miles east of where the Village is located. The restored structures are buildings which were donated by descendants of the Pioneers who occupied them. The buildings were moved to Pioneer Village from various places around the county and were all built around 1900.

The Village sits on a 10-acre parcel of land that is part of a broader area called Shingle Creek Regional Park, an urban greenbelt which follows along Shingle Creek and provides recreation and refuge from the craziness of urban sprawl. The Village property had been owned by the Babb family who purchased the land during the 1920s depression years. The land had an orange orchard on it and the Grady and Ellen Babb worked the land for many years. The property’s address is on Babb Road!

Unfortunately the orange trees succumbed in 2002 to Citrus Greening, a fatal bacterial infection carried by an Asian insect. The failing orchard was purchased by Osceola County for inclusion in the planned Regional Park. The picture below is from Google Earth, taken in 2004, and shows the extent of the orange orchards.

By 2010 many of the trees had been cleared and the parking lot for Pioneer Village had been built. Notice that the original farm buildings from the Babb residence remained in place and are still there today.

In 2015, the rest of the orchard was gone and the restored buildings of the Village had been relocated to the property.

Then, by 2018, the rest of the replicated buildings had been added.

And now, today, vacation homes line Babb Rd. and nearly surround the Village. Thankfully, Shingle Creek Regional Park is holding them somewhat at bay!

The Babb farm buildings are not a part of Pioneer Village, but they can still be viewed from our side of the fence.

In the next post (after Life of Paul) I’ll share some more about the families represented in Pioneer Village.