Kissimmee City Origins

In February 1885, a promotional booklet for Hamilton Disston’s caption described this about Kissimmee “Kissimmee City, three years ago, existed only in name, and is at this date thriving town, numbering over one thousand inhabitants, with stores, hotels, post office, schools, a newspaper, and an organized city government. It received its first impetus by the building of one of the company’s dredges at this point.”

On December 21, 1882 Kissimmee City was incorporated by vote of settlers in Kissimmee. One of those settlers was Hamilton Disston; who brought commerce and transportation to Kissimmee via steamboat; dredging and draining. This help the small settlement who was struggling financially after the Civil War. The city started to pick up slowly from the ground up. After more and more business like fishing, furs and steamboat travel more pioneers started to fill the settlement. Some of these pioneering families were : Overstreet, Bronson, Steffee, Iverson, Partin, Harney, Hughey, Johnson, Hilliard, Barber, Bass, Lanier, Acree and Sullivan. Among the new families was Frank Bass who was a contractor that built some of the early railroad around Central Florida; including Kissimmee Station. As well as the beginning of buildings in the Kissimee’’s Broadway downtown. It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more.

Robison, J. (2008). Chapter One: Frontier Allendale becomes Kissimmee. In Kissimmee, 125 years of its people and progress (pp. 20–21). essay, Donning Co. Publishers.