Archer, FL

Archer is an Alachua County city that started in the 1840s as a settler community called Deer Hammock, later Darden's Hammock. Early families lived in small cabins, grew fruit and vegetables, hunted, and drew drinking water from a local sinkhole. The Florida Railroad reached the area in 1858 and the first trains stopped the next year; the railroad shifted the town site east and helped give Archer its present name, after James T. Archer. The city incorporated in 1850, so its railroad story sits on top of an older settlement.

ATTREbyabe / CC BY 2.5

Archer's local map has a couple of unusually specific names. Maddox Foundry began in 1905 as a machine shop serving the mining industry and is still described by the city as a second-century business. Wildlife researcher T. Gilbert Pearson grew up here, and Bo Diddley lived in Archer for years and created a foundation for local youth. Archer Elementary serves younger students; middle and high school students go to Newberry. It is a small city west of Gainesville, but the shorthand is easy: sinkhole water, a railroad that moved the town, a long-running foundry, and two famous residents who left different marks.