Henry Frederick Swanson has been a lifelong advocate for agriculture and helped protect agriculture during Orange County’s transition from a rural county to the world tourist destination and corporate metropolis it is today. In 1948, he joined the Orange County Extension Service, where he worked for the next 30 years. Swanson was the first extension agent to sound the alarm that Florida’s agricultural communities were facing extinction from an urban influx. For the rest of his career, he worked tirelessly to ease the difficult transition in Orange County from rural to urban land uses, while preserving the county’s agricultural industries.