division between African-American and white communities

I think that the division between African-American and white communities shaped the perception of Winter Park. The west side of the town was much different to live in that the East side. The majority population in the West side was black and the majority of people living in the East side were white and wealthy people. This factor changed the perception of winter park as a whole.

People only looked at the East side of the tracks as a nice place to live. It all started with a man named Oliver E. Champan, who was a wealthy New Englander who was looking for a place where the climate was warm and had beautiful scenery. This would be a place where wealthy people from the north would go in the winter to get away from the cold. Winter park was also a great location because it had a train track running through it connecting to Osceola. This was a great place to go for wealthy New Englanders. However, there was “The other side of the tracks.”

The other side of the tracks was the west side. This was not a nice wealthy place. Most people who cam from New England did not live on this side of town, there was no stores, nice houses or anything close bye that was a necessity. People would have to walk around and over the tracks just to get clean water. Everything they needed they would have to go a far distance for. Nothing came easy for people who lived on the West side of town. The divide between the two sides of Winter Park were tremendous, however this had changed over time.

Today the East and West sides of winter park are still very different and always will be because of the way they were originally built. However, the city has tried to rebuild the East side and make it better and have more things accessible to them without having to travel a far distance. They just built a new community center and updated many buildings. This made the division between whites and blacks in Winter Park less noticeable. People are starting to merge and move both East and West. The land in the East side of town is still less expensive but has gotten more valuable over time.

Winter Park used to always be looked at as two different cities, the West and East. This was because of division between black people and white people, however I think the perception of Winter Park has changed drastically over the years and the West side has gotten more and more help as time goes on. Winter park has gone through a lot with a big division between races, however, the town has changed its ways and is looked at as East and West winter park being just Winter park as a whole, with no division.