The story of the Carrollwood area stretches back to the 1890s, when Rev. Isaac Ward Bearss led a small caravan from Missouri to Florida and helped form a closely knit rural community between Lake Carroll and Lake Magdalene. Over the next six decades, citrus groves and cattle ranches flourished on those fertile soils--and so, too, did the vision of a young developer named Matt Jetton. In the late 1950s, Jetton bought more than 300 acres of land surrounding Lake Carroll and built the 925-home community known as Carrollwood. By the 1970s, many of the remaining citrus groves in the areas surrounding the neighborhood gave way to new homes and businesses, and the Carrollwood name continued spreading north and west.