Struggling Hastings, Potato Capital of Florida, might soon vote town out of existence

The old town hall and community center, a once-vital building on a once-vital Main Street, dominates the downtown of this old potato- and cabbage-farming town. It’s two stories high and sprawling, and if you squint deeply you can imagine it in its heyday, many decades ago. Hastings was founded in 1890 when Florida railroad and hotel king Henry Flagler sent a relative, Thomas Horace Hastings, inland to grow vegetables for his Flagler’s resorts. It was incorporated as a town 19 years later.In Hastings’ heyday, potatoes and cabbages flooded in from surrounding farms to be processed, packed and shipped by rail or truck across the country. Businesses lined busy Main Street. The Dixie Highway, the main north-south route from Michigan to Miami, came through town in 1916, paved with bricks and busy with vacationers. By the railroad track at the town limits is an old potato-packing plant that once employed hundreds of people. It’s abandoned now.A trip to the supermarket or drugtore means heading down Florida 207 through flat farm land to Palatka or St. Augustine; schoolchildren all have to leave the town limits for class.It’s gotten to this point: In November, Hastings voters will decide if the town government should dissolve itself. Hastings would still be a mailing address but, as a town, it would no longer exist.Instead, it would become an unincorporated part of St. Johns County, which would then take over management of the area early next year.Stanton, 62, pushed to get dissolution on the ballot, saying his hometown is in such financial straits — population is small, tax revenues and property values have declined, businesses have moved out or failed — that there are no other options.