The history of Groveland

A freeze killed the groves and emptied Villa City

On open ground near Groveland, the strongest story close by belongs to Villa City, Florida, about 1.5 miles from here. George T. King, a Massachusetts man, founded the village in 1886. Within a year it had dozens of homes and its own post office, built around the citrus groves that covered this part of Lake County.

Then came February 1895. A hard freeze swept through the groves and killed the citrus trees that Villa City depended on. The settlement could not recover. Its homes emptied and the post office closed. A historical marker now stands where the village once was, and people have floated plans to build something new on the same ground.

King founded a village over far older Timucua mounds

Before the freeze, there was the founding. George T. King built Villa City in 1885 as a planned village, modeled on the idea of a Mediterranean resort town. King wanted to draw wealthy Northerners south with the promise of orange groves and a mild winter. The post office opened in 1886, and the name Villa City went on the map for the first time.

While the town took shape, workers digging around the nearby river turned up something much older. Groups of men found pre-Columbian mounds scattered around Villa City, believed to have been left by the Timucua people who had lived in this part of Florida long before any settler arrived. The mounds themselves stood as proof that people had worked this ground for centuries before King's village existed at all.

Two cold blows split the trees and the town

The freeze that ended Villa City came in two blows. A hard freeze hit on December 29, 1894. A warm spell followed, long enough to fool the trees into new growth. Then, on February 7, 1895, snow fell and the cold returned. The sap-filled trees froze solid and split open. Lake County's citrus industry, and Villa City's whole reason for existing, died in that single week.

Villa City's 35 homes stood empty within a few years. Families who had come north from Massachusetts and elsewhere had nothing left to farm. They packed up and left the village to the weeds.

The last house standing came down in 1968

Villa City did not disappear right away. In the 1930s and 1940s, it found a second life as a hunting and fishing getaway, drawing visitors to the same land that once grew oranges. But the old village itself kept fading. The Gano House, the last of the original homes, stood through all of it. It came down in 1968, and after that Villa City had no buildings left standing at all.

Three hurricanes struck the same stretch of Lake County

Groveland and the rest of Lake County have taken direct hits from three hurricanes in recent years. Hurricane Nicole struck in 2022, Hurricane Idalia in 2023, and Hurricane Milton in 2024, each one declared a federal disaster for the county. None struck this ground with the force of the 1895 freeze, but they are part of the same pattern: a place shaped again and again by what the weather does to it.

A cemetery outlasted the village by a century

The freeze also explains the name on the hook. Villa City's dead were buried at what is now called Woods Family Cemetery, about three quarters of a mile from Sandstone Drive, with burial records going back to 1881. The cemetery has outlasted the village by well over a century. Where Villa City left no buildings, the cemetery still holds its ground and its names.

Today, Sandstone Drive sits on land that was citrus country, then a ghost town, then open range again. A historical marker nearby tells visitors what stood here before the freeze came. There is talk of a new master-planned community rising on the old Villa City footprint, though nothing has been built there yet.