Buffeted by frenzied, encroaching sprawl, Limona struggles to stay rural, its beauty still found in sporadic patches.
By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published June 6, 2003
LIMONA - When Joy and Jack Maurer built their Cape Cod-style house in this northwest Brandon neighborhood in the early 1960s, Joy envisioned a place where their five children could ride horses, jump in the spring-fed ponds and "basically have their freedom on a stretch of land they could call home."
In those days, four-point buck deer roamed the family's 3-acre yard. Phone service was sketchy. The closest main road was a dirt lane.
"Our son used to ride his horse to the orthodontist on the other side of (State Road) 60," Joy recalls.
Much of that country has been swallowed up by the frenzied sprawl that dramatically shaped Brandon in recent years. But the Maurers remember the old scenery every time they look across the street at Limona Park with its rangy oak trees, dripping moss and two large ponds.
"Isn't this beautiful?" Joy asks, pausing to admire a sturdy oak with limbs outstretched with the expressive grace of a dancer. "Look at this magnificent tree - it's humongous. I imagine it to be at least 100 years old."
Limona Park was once the crown jewel of a land tract purchased in the late 1800s by the Illinois-based Elgin National Watch Co. as a settlement for retired employees. According to an 1886 plat map, plans were even brewing for a Limona Park Hotel.
Those efforts fizzled, but eight Elgin employees retired to Limona, making it one of Hillsborough County's first snowbird communities.
According to a neighborhood report from the Tampa Bay History Center, Limona was named by Judge Joseph Gillette Knapp, who settled in an abandoned log cabin on 160 acres in 1873. After clearing the land and planting orange saplings and corn, Knapp arrived at a rather elegant name for his property: Limona Farm. The name loosely means lemon in Spanish, or a place where lemon trees grow.
Even today, Limona's beauty remains preserved in sporadic patches: a surprise meadow behind an old house, a roadside sign for honey, an unmarked dirt road begging for exploration.
Limona isn't hard to get to; it's just a little hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for.
Its boundaries are east of Interstate 75, west of Parsons Avenue, north of SR 60 and south of Windhorst Road.
Compared to the traffic-clogged, strip-mall sprawl of SR 60, Limona is, well, a little like yoga on a crazy day.
Or breathing space between paragraphs.
"It's really interesting around here - you find big old oak trees, scrub and little pieces of land tucked away - yet you're within walking distance of 60," says Brenda Carter, a real estate agent in Brandon for 24 years. "A lot of people don't know it's back here, but it's one of the oldest neighborhoods in Brandon."
Carter likes to hop in the car and drive around for hours. She's game for anything: looking at historical markers, exploring a dirt road. She ticks off names of families who have lived in Limona for decades.
Home prices range from about $70,000 to around $400,000, Carter says.
It's not an up-and-coming neighborhood.
But it's not off the radar, either.
It just is.
"People who buy here are more unique," she says. "They're not subdivision types."
The Maurers' five kids are grown and many have kids of their own. But this neighborhood holds the family in thrall, long after it served its purpose. The rural lifestyle has slowly been depleted, leaving the community of Limona little more than a pretty street name on a busy road.
Limona lost its identity when the address changed to Brandon, says Nancy Mook, whose family moved from Ohio to Brandon in 1938 when she was 8 years old. Back then, the roads were dirt and the homes were often scattered miles apart.
"It was just a little rural area with a lot of civic pride. We weren't country people; we chose to live there," she says. "But people don't think of it as being Limona anymore. They think of it as Brandon."
Mook remembers monthly potluck dinners at the Limona Improvement Association. Monopoly was the "the main entertainment," and a trip to Tampa for a movie at the Tampa Theatre was considered a treat.
Mook's father worked as the Limona postmaster until his death in the early 1960s. Mook, whose company owns 11 KFC restaurants in rural Hillsborough County, opened Brandon's first fast-food franchise, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, 40 years ago, she said. She lived in Limona until last year.
After 40 years, the Maurers continue to stay put in their house off Windhorst Road. On a rare night, they can still hear the alligators bark in the ponds in Limona Park.
Joy Maurer doesn't see Limona preserving its rural character much longer: "It has become suburbia personified, with little agriculture anymore and lots of traffic."
Still, it's an unexpected breather from the bustle of big Brandon proper.
"It's natural, ostentatious and just very livable," she says. "Our kids won't let us leave. We counted 21 people in the pool one day over Memorial Day weekend."
- This is the last in a series that looks at lesser-known, interesting neighborhoods around Tampa.
