New Dawn Boat Tours

08/14/2025

Please support our friends at Old Florida Riverboat Company on East Lake Toho. Bon Voyage Captain Weaver and Terry!!!

08/01/2025

07/28/2025

Happy 5th anniversary to this beautiful couple and thanks for letting us be a part of it.

07/27/2025

Girls night out with these fun ladies!

07/23/2025

07/20/2025

Interesting history!!!

In 1881, Pennsylvania industrialist Hamilton Disston bought about 4 million acres from the state of Florida for 25 cents an acre – a deal that was instrumental in alleviating Florida's debt following the Civil War. Much of the land encompassed what would become Osceola County in 1887.

Disston’s goal was to drain wetlands for agriculture and establish navigable waterways. He dredged the Kissimmee River, facilitating steamboat transport for cypress lumber and sugarcane. While his extensive drainage efforts didn’t fully succeed, they opened much of Central Florida for development. The community of Allendale, his operational base, grew into Kissimmee City, now Osceola’s county seat, and he influenced the founding of St. Cloud through his sugar plantation. His land deal and subsequent development were a key catalyst for Florida’s first land boom, shaping Osceola County's early trajectory.

This map from our collection shows lands owned by the Disston Land Co. in the Kissimmee vicinity, circa 1890.

04/24/2025

Another beautiful evening on the boat.
Retirement Dream: Chasing sunsets!🌅
Thanks Cheryl & Steve for touring with us yet again!

04/21/2025

Private tours on the Alligator chain of lakes in St Cloud. Pricing as low as $40/pp. Call us at 407-709-0090

04/16/2025

A slice a St Cloud history. 💕

in 1909, the Kissimmee Valley Gazette announced the new town of St. Cloud, the result of one of the “most important real estate deals ever made in the State of Florida.” Industrialist Hamilton Disston originally developed the area during the 1870s as a sugarcane-growing operation, but his Florida businesses failed after the Panic of 1893 and the freezes of 1894 and ’95. The Seminole Land and Investment Co. purchased 35,000 acres with the intention of selling 5-acre lots to Civil War veterans from the North for $50 each. Eighty-six members of the Grand Army of the Republic founded what was nicknamed “Soldier’s City” – lured to Florida by a healthful climate and the productivity of the soil. St. Cloud was incorporated in 1911. The 2020 census recorded a population of almost 60,000.