Ruskin Community Development
Foundation Bicentennial and Silver
Anniversaries Coincide in Local Community
This year marks a double
celebration of the silver anniversary
of the Ruskin Community
Development Foundation (RCDF)
and the 200th of the birth of John
Ruskin, the eminent British critic of
art, industrialism, and social values.
Before Sun City Center and
King’s Point, before Apollo Beach
and MiraBay, in 1910 west central
Florida was “the final frontier.”
Locally, Ruskin and Wimauma were
its centers of development.
Wimauma had the train stop and
the stands of pines for turpentine
and lumber, where convicts hired
from the State of Florida labored to
fill the railcar flatbeds headed north.
Early on, new settlers of Ruskin
arrived by train at Wimauma and by
boat at Shell Point, where the Little
Manatee River and the Ruskin Inlet
meet to flow into Tampa Bay.
Named for John Ruskin (1819 –
1900), the town of Ruskin was newly
settled in 1910 by farmers, artists,
and educators from the American
midwest and southeast, whose
concepts of community values and
20 | SouthShore 2020 COMMUNITY RESOURCE GUIDE
development had grown from their
idealized perceptions of Ruskin, “the
Great Victorian.” He contended that
art enhanced morality, the worker
was as valuable as the industrialist
and education should develop the
whole person — “Head, Heart, and
Hands.”
In his colorful and persuasive
rhetoric, John Ruskin also argued
for the value of historic preservation,
as well as concerns now called “city
planning” and “environmental
stewardship.” The bicentennial
of Ruskin’ birth is also marked
by the release of Ruskinland, a
book tracing his influence on the
cultural landscapes of contemporary
England and America by Andrew
Hill, award-winning Financial Times
columnist in England. Hill’s final
chapter features his overview of
Ruskin, Florida.
Today in the spread of
communities whose early
development sprang from the town
of Ruskin and the land of its farming
families, many of John Ruskin’s
values persist in churches, chambers
of commerce, organizations like
the RCDF, the Firehouse Cultural
Center and the many groups in