The area of South Jacksonville on the south side of St. Johns River, appropriately named Mandarin, after the orange of the same name, was once a small riverfront farming community just south of San Marco and has a long history of being an agrarian wonderland as citrus trees thrive in the climate here as do other fruits and vegetables. The many varieties of produce grown here needed to be shipped to the Jacksonville area and farther north and with the abundance of steam-powered river boats going by on the St. Johns River, the town became known as a port city of some esteem in its heyday. A series of spring freezes in the early 1890s destroyed the citrus groves and changed the face of the region as the cash crop of oranges and citrus fruit all but dried up and many of the former groves and farmlands were sold off to developers, eager to cash in on the verdant lands that are characteristic of the region. Interestingly, Mandarin, Jacksonville was also the former summer home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” who spent 17 summers here between the years 1867 to 1884. She affectionately described Mandarin as “a tropical paradise.”