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Historical Spotlight: Packed with History

Historic packing house

If you’ve ever received a box of elegantly wrapped citrus as a gift, you can thank the Webb Family for helping to inspire that pretty-meets-practical packaging. This pioneer family, who lived at the site of Selby Gardens’ Historic Spanish Point campus in the 19th century, used an early version of that technique to ship citrus grown on the family’s Florida farm.

Around 1870, the Webbs built a packing house on the family’s property to box and ship crops grown on-site for sale around the state and country. The Webbs knew they would increase their profits by putting a little effort into packaging their citrus instead of just placing it any which way into a box.

orange packaging

Disastrous first attempts at cushioning it in Spanish moss led to rotten fruit once it reached market. But the Webbs soon shifted to tissue paper wrapping and found it a much better method of protecting the precious produce. The family also made its own shipping crates on-site and marked them with a stencil reading “John G. Webb, Osprey, Florida,” an early version of the colorful labels that came later in time and are associated with Florida citrus today.

The original packing house ceased operations in the early 1900s and no longer exists due to storm damage over the years. But the team at the Historic Spanish Point campus built an exacting replica on the site in 1990, where the original support piles can still be seen. A dock jutting out into Little Sarasota Bay helps visitors imagine how schooners were loaded with produce before setting sail for markets like Key West and Cedar Key.

Today, the reconstructed Packing House features an exhibit display centered around the washing, sorting, and packing of citrus at the site. “But people should really understand that the history is a lot richer than that,” says John McCarthy, vice president of regional history at Selby Gardens.

In addition to planting a citrus grove, the Webbs also farmed about 10 acres of land where they grew crops such as sweet potatoes, sugar cane, cabbage, onions, watermelons, and even bananas. These were also shipped out of the original packing house, along with products grown by other farmers in the area.

“It was a little center of commerce,” says McCarthy. “It was where the action was and the connection to the outside world.”

The Webb Family originally came to Florida for health reasons, and farming was how they fed themselves and made a living before opening the popular Webb’s Winter Resort they operated on the property. But their ingenuity and advantageous location led to a kind of success not achieved by other early Florida farmers.

“Most farmers didn’t have a packing house or a dock,” says McCarthy. “Most farmers didn’t have their own boat like the Webbs did; they were paying someone else to take care of all that and severely cutting into their profits. The Webbs were definitely pioneers in terms of paying so much attention to the details in packing products and essentially running their own shipping company.”