The Tangerine Drop event is returning to Brooksville on New Year’s Eve from 6 p.m.-1 a.m. at the Water Tower in downtown Brooksville. The Tangerine Drop has always been known as a family-friendly event and this year is no different with an early “ball drop” for the kids at 9 p.m. if they cannot stay up until midnight. The event is being organized by Brooksville Main Street. To find out more information on the event you can visit https://www.welovebvl.org/ or https://www.tangerinedrop.com/
The Tangerine Drop on New Year’s Eve is a well-known Hernando County event. There are many lists of crazy things that cities drop on New Year’s Eve and Brooksville is on many of those lists for the Tangerine Drop.
In 2019-2020, a large orange weather balloon acted as the tangerine and was pulled down at midnight. Then we had the Covid-19 pandemic and there was a hiatus before the tangerine drop this year. Previously, a fiberglass tangerine was dropped at the Jerome Brown Community Center along a metal pipe. The last time the fiberglass tangerine was dropped was the 2008-2009 New Year. This year, we will see a return of the fiberglass tangerine.
Wayne Vutech, former Tangerine Drop committee chairman, said in an article at the time that the event had ended in 2009 because of diminishing funds and a lack of volunteers.
The Tangerine Drop was a local twist on the famous apple that is dropped in New York City. The orange/tangerine industry played a major role in the history of Hernando County. The first bank in Hernando County was the Brooksville State Bank and was established in 1890. The bank was highly reliant on the Citrus. Citrus was the area’s major cash crop and, at the time, had an estimated 300,000 trees planted in the area. The winter of 1894 to 1895 was very cold and much of the citrus was lost. These losses contributed to the bank closing in 1897.
A few years after the freeze, several small groves were started. In 1905, J. J. Bell established a small orange packing plant. In 1908, Bell and other prominent orange growers decided to establish the Brookville Citrus Growers Association. This association built a packing facility on South Main. The association pushed the marketing and growth of tangerines in the area. This association lasted until a big freeze hit in the winter of 1984 to 1985.
Oranges were part of the inspiration for the editor of a daily Czechoslovakian newspaper, Joseph Joscak, to start a column that advocated moving to warm Florida, which led to the creation of Masaryktown. Many of his readers were working in mines and factories in the north and read his column, which extolled the virtues of moving to the warm climate and excellent farming opportunities. Unfortunately, Masaryktown was not in an area conducive to growing oranges, but the area became a major poultry producer.
There was a time when almost all the prominent citizens of the county had groves, whether they were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, ranchers, or farmers. Brooksville billed itself as the ‘Home of the Tangerine.’ Florida Cracker Kitchen has one of the old signs proclaiming this slogan.
