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Decades ago, 98 acres of the richest soil in St. Petersburg called the Goose Pond was being paved over for progress
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 3, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- About 48 years ago, a 98-acre paradise was buried beneath a concrete jungle.
Locals called the stretch the Goose Pond. Horticulturists called it "extremely rare" land that possessed every nutrient for plant growth.
"The ground was so rich that it burned," resident Harry Scott, 85, said about the tract that covered Third Avenue S to Fifth Avenue N, from 31st to 34th Street. "There was a lot of smoke."
Produce matured there faster than anywhere known. "You could hardly carry the watermelon from there they were so big," said Robert L. Miller, whose grandfather owned Goose Pond property.
In 1952, the stores and parking lots of Central Plaza covered the fertile land, but before World War I, Japanese-American farmers raised lettuce, green onions and other produce from Goose Pond's mire. Chinese evergreens decorated Oriental dish gardens that featured bridges and lanterns.
The St. Petersburg Times reported that there were a half-dozen Japanese families here then.
Drainage projects later surfaced on all of Goose Pond's 98 acres, where once a lake glistened. Locals hunted ducks, the press wrote, but no one could remember seeing a goose.
In 1925, R.J. McCutcheon, J.F. Utley and Miller's grandfather, M.P. Miller, purchased the Goose Pond for $100,000.
Miller's grandfather and father ran an open-air grocery store and Sunoco gas station there for about 12 years. McCutcheon cultivated and sold plants and flowers.
"I sold gardenias for 25 cents each up and down Central Avenue," said Paul R. McCutcheon Jr., 74, McCutcheon's grandson.
In 1927, municipal engineer John Nolen submitted a $5-million proposal for an airport, civic center and city hall. It failed and the Japanese remained to farm the land they leased.
"I could see them on their knees powdering the soil with their hands into a fine texture," said Robert L. Miller, 79. And when the peat was dry, it smoldered underneath and sometimes ignited.
"The smell was unpleasant," former Times reporter Betty Jean Miller recalled.
"They had to flood the area sometimes to stop the fires," said resident John Thornton, 87.
Farmers bagged their mules' feet in burlap so they wouldn't bog down in the wet muck. Plowing mules also wore "mud shoes," Robert L. Miller said. The wooden flats, 8 inches square and about 2 inches thick, were clamped to the beasts' hooves.
In 1937, Al Furen purchased 23 Goose Pond acres hoping to create a "show place," the Times wrote. Reportedly, limited funds dashed his dream of a shopping center, a sunken gardens and a wildlife sanctuary.
Meanwhile, locals headed to Goose Pond with buckets and trucks to purchase its rich soil. "You could throw a stone in there and it would grow," said resident Sam Hicks Jr., 85.
Mary Kimura, 74, wife of Herbert Kimura, one of the last Japanese Goose Pond farmers, described the area's World War II days. "Greenery," she said. "If you liked to see the land growing, it was the place to be."
Mary Kimura and Paul R. McCutcheon Jr. recalled, however, how the Japanese were forbidden to have weapons of any kind, including ax heads, during the war.
About 1946, the school board purchased 67 Goose Pond acres for $55,000. It later dealt smaller portions away before selling 55 acres to developers for $682,000.
"In the following years, heavy residential construction bulwarked the Goose Pond on the west," the press reported.
Developers bought Furen's holdings around 1951 for $245,000. "Furen offered me a (100-foot by 90-foot) lot" as a $300 down payment on a car in the 1940s, Hicks Jr. recently said. "I said no. Worst move I ever made."
The Evening Independent reported that Goose Pond became a "highly valued tract" when talk exploded in the 1940s about the coming of U.S. 19.
"That was the beginning of commercialization and the demise of farming at Goose Pond," said Paul R. McCutcheon Jr.
Historian Walter Fuller recorded that Webb's City owner Earl "Doc" Webb fought in 1952 to have "the then-barren Goose Pond chopped into conventional blocks" to stop Central Plaza development.
Central Plaza opened in 1952, costing $500,000 in construction and causing the removal of several houses, the Independent wrote.
"The water and cattails vanished under tons of concrete," the Times reported. Mary Kimura didn't recall much sadness then. "We were glad to see Central Plaza."
Resident Bill Emerson, 79, said that there was sorrow, "but there were a lot of people thinking in terms of the city growing. We didn't think of preservation then."
-- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@gate.net.