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Ah, Cinderella Castle, the Bavarian-style beauty that stands regally in the background of the vacation photos of millions of people every year. The castle has served as the icon for Magic Kingdom for 50 years now, and its royal beauty is more noticeable now than ever, thanks to its recent facelift in celebration of the 50th anniversary celebratory exercises and experiences at the park.
But beware. She wants you to think she’s something she’s not. She wants you to think something about her that just isn’t true. Though she’s lovely, Cinderella Castle is, simply put, a lovely, filthy liar. Well, she would be, if she could speak and if she chose to use her words to describe herself as the first castle built in Central Florida.
Though she’s clearly the most recognizable castle in Central Florida, and perhaps the most recognizable castle across the global Disney Parks icons, she’s hardly the first to have been built in Florida. That honor goes to the Pine Castle house in Pine Castle, Florida.
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In 1869, shortly after the Civil War, a man named Will Wallace Harney and his wife, Mary Randolph Harney, made the long journey from Louisville, Kentucky, to Orlando, Florida. Before coming to Florida, Harney had already gained some notoriety as a writer.
Credit: Pine Castle Historical Society
“Most of his writing appeared in serialized form in newspapers across the country,” says William Morgan, chairman of Pine Castle Pioneer Days.
Morgan says Harney’s writing read like a blend between the works of Mark Twain and those of Edgar Allan Poe. His pieces were written in a humorous tone, and Harney always used the dateline, “Pine Castle.”
“Those writings gave us our first real glimpse of what it was like to live in Central Florida,” says Morgan, “People across the country just ate it up.”
Like Walt Disney, Will Wallace Henry got a heck of a deal on his Central Florida land. In fact, Harney trumps Disney when it comes to getting the best price on Florida land; he got it for free, thanks to a practice called homesteading. The only catch was that if you chose to acquire land by homesteading it, the law said you also had to live on it and make improvements to the land.
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One of the first things Harney and his wife did with their 160 acres of land was to build a living structure on it, but this was no ordinary structure.
Credit: Facebook/Pine Castle Historical Society
“It was such an odd-looking place that when people would go by it they would say, ‘there’s the pine castle,’” Morgan explains.
The “castle” looked a bit reminiscent of a cabin, but unlike other cabins built during the late 1800s, Harney’s structure featured timbers that laid vertically, rather than horizontally, giving it the illusion of being taller than it was. It’s true, though, that Harney’s castle was much larger than other cabins built during that time. It also featured a central, octagonally-shaped room situated between a left wing and a right wing.
Henry’s castle, like Cinderella Castle at Magic Kingdom, also featured turrets. A long porch ran across the front of the castle, and it also had lookout areas. It was very different from any structure built in the area at that time–so different that the geographical area around Harney’s castle became known as “Pine Castle, Florida.” Today, the large area is a combination of a handful of towns, including Edgewood, Belle Isle, Conway, and Pine Castle.
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Credit: The Orlando Sentinel
