Selections from Trailer City, Winter Garden, Florida, 2005-2006

Starting in the spring of 2005, I began researching and photographing in Trailer City, at the time a 70-year-old community, of mobile homes, founded on public land as a “tin camp” in the 1930s and located on the south shore of Lake Apopka in Central Florida. It was my ultimate goal that this project would generate public awareness and appreciation for the unique trailer park lifestyle, once so common throughout Florida, and to help save Trailer City from being destroyed or displaced. I met and photographed many wonderful residents—mostly working-class retirees from the upper Midwest—and experienced this unique lakefront community during a full range of seasons. I am happy to report that two decades later, Trailer City is alive and well and that the City of Winter Garden has made a commitment to protect it for the future.