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Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy

Chapter Seven 1870 - 1879

Acording to Dr.
Jerrell Shofner in his study
of Reconstruction in
Florida (see Further
Reading at the end of the
book), something called
the “Lake City Outrage”
occurred in 1873 and led
to much unrest. It dealt
with Warren S. Bush of
Columbia County, a man

Governor Ossian Hart who had served as tax
collector since 1871 and
had been elected to the state legislature in 1872. Angry at Governor

Hart’s political appointments in 1873, Bush and some of his henchmen
fired bullets into the houses of county officials and forced the postmaster
to leave town. A county grand jury indicted Bush and two of his cronies,
who had intimidated witnesses, who then refused to testify against
them. When officials discovered that Bush had embezzled $24,000 of
county and state funds while he was the tax collector, he was arrrested.
Meanwhile military troops patrolled Lake City for several weeks during
the turmoil. 26

Fires continued to be a major problem in the 1870s, especially
those that were deliberately set. The 1874 fire that destroyed many of
the wooden buildings in Lake City led to a new policy of building
stronger buildings out of brick.

The city reached a kind of respectability with the printing of a
newspaper, the Lake City Reporter, around 1874 - 1875. The city’s
first brick store, the Bigelow Building, which later became City Hall,
was built in 1876.

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