An occasional series
The historically designated Donnelly House, built in 1893 by a real estate developer and businessman who became the town's mayor, is a symbol of Mount Dora, but it is the only "Victorian"-style house in town. Actually, it is built in the Queen Anne style. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 11-11-2012.
Florida’s hill country, such as it is, centers in Lake County (which also is lake country), west of Orlando and north of Tampa. It is not exactly breathtaking, but the landscape starts to roll as one drives north from Tampa, taking the boredom out of Interstate 75, and the terrain east of Brooksville is almost mountainous.
Hyperbole, yes. You won’t find Maria von Trapp singing “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” but by the time you reach State Road 44, the Wildwood exit that is home to one of the state’s biggest truck stops, things have gone noticeably flat again.
Unless, that is, you head east on S.R. 44, past the Russell Stover outlet store (tough not to stop there), and continue on through Leesburg and Tavares until you get to Mount Dora, population 12,500, elevation 184 feet, where the topography gets a bit hilly again.
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Realizing that it has taken about two and a half hours to get here from Sarasota, one might think, “You can’t get there from here.” But should you survive the long trek, Mount Dora rewards the day-tripper with a visual delight like few others in the land of flowers, and its appeal goes well beyond the modestly hilly terrain.
Mount Dora, home to quaint shops and restaurants, vintage homes and the historic Lakeside Inn (photo on home page), is to central Florida what Arcadia is to south central Florida — an antiques capital, but without the rodeo. It does have, however, an antiques, arts and crafts festival March 23-24 that draws thousands from around the state. October is busy with an annual bicycle festival and race, and a famed antiques weekend. The Mount Dora Music Festival is Feb. 14-17.
This weekend, (Feb. 2-3) is the 38th annual arts festival, attracting 285 artists from many countries, who show their work on the streets downtown. All of these events give the town the nickname “festival city." (Information: MountDoraEvents.com or MountDora.com.)
Shops along Donnelly Street in downtown Mount Dora, a charming town in Lake County, northwest of Orlando. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 11-11-2012.
It’s also a haven for easy-riding motorcyclists up from Orlando or Tampa for the day.
“It reminds older adults of where they grew up,” said longtime resident Andrea Burr Yatsuk, daughter of a 10-generation Florida family.
“For the young families, it is the security and the pedestrian scale of the community, with the many parks. People who buy on this side of U.S. 441, which is the more historic side, tend to like living on the grid (streets), and they are more porch-dwellers, whereas on the other side, we have some fabulous, beautiful neighborhoods, but they are more recently developed with the garage lifestyle, more of a suburban thing.
“We really have several distinct styles of housing.”
The most distinctive is Queen Anne, often confused with Victorian. In fact, the Donnelly House of the Queen Anne style has become a symbol of the town. The only problem is that it is the only such house in Mount Dora.
This house, one of the oldest in Mount Dora, was built in 1899 at 423 N. Tremain St. It is listed for sale at $ 234,500. It has three bedrooms and three baths in just 1,240 square feet. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 11-11-2012.
“The predominant architectural style is the Craftsman bungalow; it is not the frou-frou Donnelly House,” said Yatsuk. “Everything else is eclectic turn-of-the-century or Craftsman style.”
The column-framed open porch lends the feeling of community to Mount Dora. People sit on their porches and talk to their neighbors as they go by.
Sidewalks add appeal for pedestrians.
The town, and the lake over which it sits on a bluff, was named after Dora Drawdy. In the 1840s, she and her husband lived in Lake Ola. Dora was so kind to the surveyors, letting them camp on Drawdy land, that they named the lake after her.
The town’s first name was Royellou, after the children of the Tremain family — Roy, Ella and Louis; their father was the first postmaster. But the townspeople later named it after the lake.
“Dora’s son was a surveyor and lived in the historic house across the street,” said Yatsuk, a former health-care planner who has lived in Mount Dora for 25 years. That house is for sale. Her own, the 1907 Tremain-Slack House, has an upstairs apartment that rents for about $825 a month.
The real estate market is “busy,” said Ashley Lowe, of Dave Lowe Realty, which was founded in the late 1960s.
“We are getting a lot of buyers from Miami and Dade County,” he said. “They have been down there for a while and have seen the changes, and they feel it is time for a move. They can sell and do better with their money up here.
“Life is quiet, less hustle and bustle, and it is a great environment to raise a family.”
Efficiency suites in the 1912 Maison en Ville, a bed-and-breakfast in Mount Dora, rent from $ 87 to $ 185 a night in season. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 11-11-2012.
Younger people who work in Orlando also are choosing to live in Mount Dora, 30 minutes distant, as the highway system improves. “Mount Dora is growing,” said Lowe. “The commute is so easy.”
Besides the biking and hiking afforded by the town’s picturesque streets, Lake Dora is known for its bass fishing and water skiing. In fact, for the 1981 movie “Honky Tonk Freeway,” which also was filmed partly in Fruitville, a water-skiing elephant was brought in for one scene. Lake tours are offered in a pontoon boat.
The lake provides some strange weather in Mount Dora, which was severely damaged by the “Storm of the Century” in 1993. “Eight tornadoes came off the lake, felled trees, messed up houses,” said Yatsuk. “It took three weeks to get power back.
“Lake-effect snow is rare but possible,” she said. It happens right off of the bluff on the road to Tavares,” as moisture comes off the lake. “It is the weirdest thing.”
Mount Dorans are proud of their little city, but they aren’t snooty.
“I hate to talk about Mount Dora without talking about our ‘Golden Triangle,’ because it is very historic,” said Yatsuk. “Tavares, Eustis and Mount Dora. Tavares is the ‘Fly-In City,’ with lots of infrastructure for airplanes.
“I think it is important to grow as a region. And if we are going to have density, grow up and not grow out, so we leave green Florida.”
The region’s many lakes make for some long drives, and you can get turned around in a hurry in the dark. Perhaps in an effort to move traffic along back in the 1950s, it was proposed that U.S. 441 would be routed through the center of downtown Mount Dora, of Fifth Avenue.
It's a tourist thing: Seeing historical downtown Mount Dora in a horse-drawn carriage. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 11-11-2012.
"The townspeople had a fit," said Yatsuk.. "They wrote to Doyle Carlton and Gov. LeRoy Collins, a good friend of our family. Finally, Dick Edgerton, a banker, called LeRoy and said, ‘We don’t want this highway.’ So they moved it all the way out where 441 is now, and it left the town intact. If the people hadn’t been proactive, the community would have been divided, like Eustis is. So they really banded together.
"It left the downtown as an intact village, which is a main draw for people. It is really great. We love being able to walk downtown to dinner for the sunset or to a gallery.”
And there are a lot of those.
