The County Seat: Tavares Since 1888
Founded in 1880 by Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, who wanted a state capital and got a county seat — the government town’s story and its growth question.
1 minute read
Tavares was founded in 1880 by Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, a lawyer and newspaper man who named the new town for a Portuguese ancestor of his family — and who had a larger ambition for it. St. Clair-Abrams promoted Tavares as a future capital of Florida. The state capital never came. What came, in 1887–88, was the consolation that stuck: when Lake County was carved out in 1887, Tavares became its seat, and the city says it has served as the county’s seat since 1888. It has held the job ever since.
The government town
County-seat status is Tavares’s economic bedrock. The historic courthouse and the county administration anchor downtown; the weekday population of lawyers, clerks, jurors and county staff gives Main Street its lunch trade and its rhythm. Government towns have a particular steadiness — the work does not move away — and Tavares’s downtown carries that steadiness in its streetscape: civic buildings first, commerce fitted around them, the lake a block away in both directions.
The growth question
The steadiness now has company. Tavares counted 19,003 people at the 2020 census, up 36 percent on the decade, and federal estimates now put the city above 22,000 — Lake County is one of Florida’s fast-growing counties, and its seat is growing with it, spreading south and east from the isthmus downtown. The tension is the familiar Florida one, sharpened by geography: an isthmus has edges, and Tavares’s edges are lakes. How a two-lakefront government town grows without spoiling the waterfront that brands it — the seaplane base, Wooton Park, the canal — is the town’s defining planning question for the next decade.
For the visitor version of the town, start with the Tavares guide. For the resident version, you are already reading it: courthouse, lakes, growth, in that order, every day.
Orlando Citizen by email
The weekly edition, in your inbox
One email, every Saturday: the week’s edition of Orlando Citizen — the week’s stories, rankings and winners, gathered in one place. Free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Related Stories
Editor’s Picks
Spotted an error? Tell us — corrections · How we rank