On April 12th, 1905 the City of Alachua was officially incorporated and had a population of 526. In 1914 Alachua had two banks, three hotels, a number of stores ranging from a fruit stand to a large, well-stocked department store, ice plant, electric light plant, waterworks, two cotton gins, two grist mills and bottling works. The electric light and waterworks plant began operating in 1913.

By 1915, two church buildings were constructed for the Baptist and Methodist congregations. The local Presbyterians held their services in the Baptist church. The school building stood on the hill to the northeast of town where Alachua Elementary currently is. In 1924, the Alachua High School basketball team scored a major upset with a victory in the state tournament over Duval High of Jacksonville. By 1925 Alachua had a population of 1,100. It still had two banks and its own utilities but all three churches now had their own building. There was now a telephone connection to the outside world.

Main Street originally was a dirt road lined with trees running through the middle of town. Saturday on Main Street was the busiest time of the week. Local farmers from miles around would come to town with their families to buy groceries, plow lines, bridles, nails, buckets, cloth, shoes, and any other household needs.

Early in the morning the wagons would start lining up with the mules pulling into shady places where they were parked for the day. Everybody came dressed up in clean overalls and starched and ironed dresses, including the children. They`d spend some of the time standing around in front of the Post Office, Mr. Hasting`s or Mr. Fugate`s grocery store or Dale`s or Joiner`s Drug Store, where they`d buy liniment, Grover`s chill tonic, 666 tablets and ice cream cones.

Most of the families brought their own shelled corn to Mr. Petitt`s to be ground into meal and grits. He`d do the grinding for half the corn so there was no exchange of money. The store windows had prices painted on them with white, watery chalk. Inside the stores, rice, beans and sugar were scooped up out of barrels into brown paper bags and tied with white string that came down through a hook in the ceiling and up through a hole in the counter. White bacon and cured meat along with beef and pork that was recently butchered, hung behind the counter, and Mr. Hastings would cut off a pound or two at a time with the same knife he used to cut the yellow wedges of cheese. Canned goods were stacked in rows and people would wait in line for a clerk to take their order. They would fill up their kerosene cans for their lamps and put a raw potato back in the spout. Many farmers would bring eggs to sell and each would be held over a light bulb to determine if it was good.   

 

In the afternoon, visiting would begin and the streets would be so crowded that it was hard to move. After a few hours, families would begin to load up and the children would begin to be packed in between sacks of flour and meal and other goods. One by one they would pull out and drive slowly home in time to feed the livestock before dark.

Some of the men who had been working in the stores all day would go to Mr. Stoke`s little barber shop down by Mr. Eddy`s hardware store or to Willie Cauthen`s bigger barber shop by Charlie Smith`s dry cleaners. They`d sit for hours on the benches covered with green oil cloth until it was their turn for a hair cut, shave and sometimes a bath in the large tub in the back of the shop. They`d come out in a puff of steam and always smell like Palmolive soap and show up at church the next day smelling like a combination of soap, Mennen`s shaving lotion and Three Roses talcum powder.

One of the popular sites on Sunday afternoon`s was Burnett`s Lake, which got it`s name from a Mayor of Gainesville, Samuel W. Burnett. Pinkoson Spring near modern-day Turkey Creek was also a favorite swimming spot.

The wagons didn`t stop suddenly, but rather dwindled down to a trickle and were gradually replaced by the Model T Ford. The farmers still came to town to buy supplies, but most drove a Model T pick-up. Later, the Model T was replaced by the Model A, and in 1932 everyone went to Enneis Motor Company on South Main Street to see the brand new Ford with the new V8 engine.