The land belonged to the Heebner family. Robert Heebner Jr. graduated from Stetson, flew Navy dive bombers and torpedo planes off carriers in World War II, and came home to DeLand, where he became a bank vice president and president of the Chamber of Commerce.
In retirement he kept a ranch here in the Glenwood area — cattle, fern, orange groves and a vegetable garden. The county's own aerial photos show this land as woods and open pasture for about twenty years.
Oranges run deep around here. Just up the road in Glenwood, a chance seedling found in an 1879 grove became the Hamlin orange, for years the most widely grown orange in Florida.


Aerial imagery: Volusia County.


