John Charles Miller

Citrus White Gold: an Alternate History of Citrus County, Florida John Charles Miller

The evening of April 9, 1891, the Citrus County Commission chambers in Mannfield, Florida were taken over by a partisan group from the nearby town of Inverness, declaring Inverness to be the new county seat. ?Stolen? is what irate folks from Mannfield said. In fact, the County Clerk, still in his chair at his desk, writing, had been loaded into a mule-drawn wagon and hauled off, along with county furniture and records. By 1917, Mannfield was no longer on maps ? it was a ?ghost town? with naught but longleaf pine and turkey oak-covered woods. Nothing remained, not even foundations, just a lonely cemetery, a dried up pond and old sandy roads. Could things have been different? The history of Mannfield, Citrus County and even the United States of the late 1890s and early 1900s changed when Jim Harkins went on one of his nature-loving bicycle rides down the northern portion of the Withlacoochee State Trail in Citrus County in the early autumn of 2001. All caused by a wandering gopher tortoise crossing the trail.