The Orange Belt Railway served as the lifeline of the area from Sanford to Lake Apopka from 1885 through the early part of the 20th century, and much of the Seminole Wekiva Trail was later built on its roadbed. Starting at Lake Monroe, it linked what is now the western part of Seminole County with stops at Sylvan Lake, Paola, Island Lake, Glen Ethel, Groveland, Palm Springs, Granada, Forest City, and Toronto, covering 18 miles. In 1885, Peter A. Demens, a prosperous sawmill owner in Longwood, took over the charter of the Orange Belt Railway, then just underway in Lake Monroe, as payment for cross ties from his mill. The charter authorized a 35-mile railroad from Monroe, now Lake Monroe, to Oakland on the south shore of Lake Apopka, and that segment was completed in November 1886. Demens overcame serious financial difficulties to extend the line to the Gulf coast in 1888, with help from meat-packer Phillip Armour and Philadelphia financiers after a series of contractual and financial crises were averted. By 1888, the railway reached Pinellas Point on the Gulf of Mexico and, at 117.68 miles, became the longest narrow gauge railroad in the country, a distinction it held until 1897. Point Pinellas, the southern terminus, was named St. Petersburg in honor of Demens' native city in Russia. After entering bankruptcy in 1893, the line became part of the Plant System and was renamed the Sanford and St. Petersburg Railway.