This laid-back city is a few miles in from the Atlantic shore in Indian River County. For me Fellsmere embodies the best of both the coast and the inland rural lifestyle in the swamps. Head west and there are freshwater lakes, marsh, and cypress domes, all bursting with wildlife. A few minutes east of Fellsmere …
This understated rural city is on the western flank of the Clermont Chain of Lakes. In fact, a big portion of Mascotte’s area is made up of water, and there’s even more to the north and east. Aside from lakes, the landscapes here are pasture interwoven with treed swamps and a growing number of residential …
A southern suburb of Jacksonville, Orange Park is a half-hour commute to downtown Jax. The town sits next to a wide stretch of the St. Johns River, and it’s well worth pulling off US 17 to take a real look. Here on River Road, things feel a lot like Old Florida, with majestic live oaks, …
In my idea of a dream location, Gulf Breeze is a city at the end of a long peninsula in Pensacola Bay. I’ll try and be concise here, but it’s not easy when talking about everything you can do on this part of the Gulf Coast. First off there’s the waters of Pensacola Bay and …
On the northern edge of the lake of the same name, Okeechobee is a city with a lot to love. I’ll start with one of America’s largest freshwater water bodies. Lake Okeechobee is renowned as a haven for trophy bass, and there’s a ton of charter companies in the area to help you catch them. …
A half-hour west of Tallahassee, Quincy is a 200-year-old city with a lot of unique stories to reveal. One compelling one is that dozens of mostly humble local residents struck rich in the Coca-Cola boom of the 1920s. As late as the 1980s that wealth was still sluicing through the city, when the Leaf Theater …
On the fertile southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee, Pahokee is a small community dating back to the Florida land boom of the 1920s. In fact, booms and busts, and devastating hurricanes have defined the history of this city. For visitors, “Florida’s Inland Sea” is the star attraction. This vast water body spreads out beyond the …
South of downtown Orlando, Belle Isle is a residential city on the shore of the Conway Chain of Lakes. Linked by canals, these three lakes take up more than half of Belle Isle’s total area. Lake Conway here is one of the largest in Greater Orlando, and a hotspot for bass fishing. Even though there …
Although it’s part of the Tampa Bay Area, Dade City feels about as far away from city life and theme parks as you can get. Instead you’ll find a flourishing small town among rolling farmland, with a sociable downtown, and a massive tract of wilderness on its eastern flank. I can’t help but bring up …
On the Lake Worth Lagoon, this coastal town in Palm Beach County was founded in the 1920s by the ambitious developer, Harry Seymour Kelsey. He hired world-famous planners to lay out what would be the first zoned municipality south of Washington, D.C.. This was during the height of the Florida land boom, and Kelsey’s plans …