A swan sits at the southeast corner of Orlando’s Lake Eola Park, between (left) a 1924 marker honoring Orange County soldiers killed in World War I and a 1939 marker in honor of Orlando Reeves, the city’s legendary namesake — and very likely a legend only. Researchers have found no record of him in U.S. Army files. (Joy Wallace Dickinson)

I don’t know about you, but I’ll turn the car around to look at a historic marker. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years. Out of the blue on a jaunt to Vero Beach, for example, I learned that in June 1915, Zena Dreier of tiny Fellsmere, Florida, became the first woman in the South to cast a ballot. I had no idea.

Recently, I stumbled upon a marker on Orlando’s Highland Avenue that I had never noticed, despite many years of driving by. It’s a low structure, a metal plaque set in stone — not tall like the official Florida Historical Markers that include a distinctive three-palmetto logo at the top. (There are plenty of these around, including one at the site of Fort Gatlin, at Gatlin and South Summerlin avenues.)

A marker at Highland Avenue and Lake Highland Drive in Orlando is dedicated to Martin W. Brown, former general manager of the Orlando Utilities Commission, who died in 1947 at age 55. (Joy Wallace Dickinson)

Getting out of the car to inspect the Highland Avenue discovery, I learned it honored Martin W. Brown, onetime head of the Orlando Utilities Commission (now OUC), who died in 1947 at age 55. It’s now within Orlando’s Lake Highland Park, which was originally planned as Martin W. Brown Park, according to a November 1947 Sentinel article.

Brown was replaced as OUC chief by Curtis H. Stanton, and his name is no longer well known in Orlando, as it was in the 1940s. Time tends to do that and changes our perspective on the people and places we honor in metal and stone.

The march of time and technology has made it much easier to learn about historical markers and become a collector of them — at least of their photos — than it was even a decade ago. That’s thanks to the Historical Marker Database (HMdb.org), launched in 2006 by J.J. Prats, a computer programmer based in Powell, Ohio.

Erected in 2003 at Gatlin and South Summerlin avenues, an official Florida Historical Marker (number F-483) marks the site of Fort Gatlin, the 1838 Seminole War outpost credited with being the genesis of Orlando. (Joy Wallace Dickinson)

Prats began the site with 179 markers, but by 2015, it had mushroomed to more than 74,000. It now has a searchable bonanza of more than 171,500, according to a counter on the Historical Marker Database home page. Its growth is thanks to the contributions of many volunteers — interested folks who add markers to the database and update existing marker pages with new photographs, links, information and commentary (see the “about” section of the site for instructions).

In 2016, the marker database got a big boost when it made an agreement with Google that helped turn the geographic coordinates of markers on the site into “PokeStops” in the popular Pokémon GO mobile game.

Right now, Florida has more than 4,000 markers on the Historical Marker Database, ranking it No. 10 among the states. (New York ranks first, followed closely by Virginia and Texas — all three have more than 11,000 markers each.) The site counts 158 for Orange County when I last checked earlier this month, ranging from markers in Apopka to the William Bartram Trail. The total for Seminole County is 135. Volusia County’s hopping with 387, and Brevard’s hot, too, with 315. Fewer have been submitted for Osceola County (15) and Lake (50).

In 1998, a stone marker was placed by this large live oak tree at Oakstand Lane and Windy Wood Drive. It’s in the Walden's Retreat area of the Bryn Mawr subdivision off Conway Road in Orlando and was dedicated to the residents of the area, the marker’s inscription notes. (Joy Wallace Dickinson)

In Orange County, Orlando’s Tinker Field History Plaza is rich with markers and monuments, as is Lake Eola Park, where subjects range from Mohandas Gandhi of India to Orlando Reeves, the City Beautiful’s namesake of legend.

There are varying theories about how Orlando got its name, but the traditional favorite centers around the tale of how Reeves, a U.S. soldier during the Second Seminole War, supposedly lost his life in combat near Lake Eola.

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That’s the version memorialized on the impressive-looking piece of rock at the southeast corner of Lake Eola Park, near another marker honoring soldiers killed in World War I. It was paid for and put in place in 1939 by Cherokee Junior High students.

Nevertheless, many historians are as close to certain as one can be in this uncertain world that there was no Orlando Reeves. Federal military records are quite reliable, they say. He’s just not there.

This 1935 marker in the median of East Morse Avenue at Interlachen Avenue commemorates the 50th anniversary of the 1885 decision by the General Congregational Association of Florida to establish Rollins College in Winter Park. Another Rollins 50th anniversary marker, at Chase and East Fairbanks avenues, was also placed in 1935 by the college’s faculty. (Joy Wallace Dickinson)

It’s a great example of an important aspect to consider when tracking down historic markers: they carry with them not only the information carved or engraved on them — the names and dates — but the influence of the times in which they were created.

In 1935, folks looking back 50 years on the establishment of Rollins College in Winter Park installed not one but two sizable markers paying tribute to a 50th anniversary celebration that now seems far in the past itself.

In any case, I’m counting myself a marker collector. It’s a little like stamp or coin collecting, Historical Marker Database founder J.J Prats notes. If you’re a collector or want to get started, consider uploading your own discoveries to the site.

Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at joydickinson@icloud.com, FindingJoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter to Florida Flashback, c/o Dickinson, P.O. Box 1942, Orlando, FL 32802.