A Look Back: Ocala - The Silver Springs Shell Shop
One of my fondest childhood memories was spending my hard-earned pennies on buying sea shells at the Silver Springs Shell Shop, an iconic gift shop across from the Sun Plaza Motel in Silver Springs. They had everything, from conchs to cowries to tiny jingle shells and shark’s teeth. Like most gift shops of the day, they also sold goofy trinkets like coconuts carved to look like monkey heads, tacky t-shirts, big beach towels, and stickers.
Alas, the Shell Shop is no more. For reasons known only to themselves, Florida DOT decided several years ago that they needed to plow it down to widen an intersection. Well, here it is two summers later, and they’ve yet to build the intersection, and the land stands empty. Why they couldn’t have left this perennial tourist icon alone is a mystery to me. And so it goes into the file of memories of places that aren’t there anymore. That’s me, buying a beach towel, on one of the last days the store was open in 2006.