Naranja, Florida | community, ghost town, CDP - Census Designated Place

 community, invisible, ghost town, CDP - Census Designated Place

The town of Naranja began in 1904 as an area filled with orange groves. It became one of the railroad towns along Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad. William Moody, of the Brown and Moody General Store, named the town Naranja after the Spanish word for orange, because he liked the way it sounded. In 1913 a major citrus canker epidemic destroyed most of the crops, severely damaging the local economy. In 1926, a powerful hurricane ended what was becoming a major land boom in this tiny South Florida community, further crippling the area financially. In 1935, a devastating Category 5 Hurricane claimed the lives of hundreds in the Florida Keys, and left the railroad line south of Miami in shambles. It was not rebuilt, bringing the original vision of Naranja as a railroad town to an end.ghost