Silver Springs featured a Howard Johnson's Restaurant as early as the 1940s. Initially it was housed in an old style colonial-type building that coexisted with the circa 1962 Motor Lodge for about four years. The Restaurant building shown in the photographs on this page was built in about 1966--replacing the original 1940s facility.

Marriott assumed control of the Restaurant after 1986 -- subsequently its ownership was transferred to Cincinnati based Frisch's which operated it as a Big Boy until about 1994. Frisch's retrenched in the middle 1990s and exited the Florida market at which point its Silver Springs restaurant became a local eatery called LaRoccos III.