Clermont, FL

Clermont’s Citrus Tower is a marker of how thoroughly the city has changed. Built in 1955–1956 and opened in July 1956, the 226-foot structure gave visitors an elevated view across commercial citrus groves on the Lake Wales Ridge. Freezes, disease, and subdivision removed most of those groves by the late twentieth century. The tower still operates an observation deck, but lakes, streets, and neighborhoods now occupy much of the old agricultural view. Clermont’s rolling ridge terrain is unusual in peninsular Florida, and the hills remain evident in local roads, running routes, and the tower’s long sightlines. The Clermont chain of lakes and Lake Apopka add water to that topography, with Lake Minneola at downtown’s edge.

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Downtown meets Lake Minneola at Waterfront Park, where a fitness trail joins the regional trail system and the shoreline hosts races, regattas, festivals, and everyday recreation. A Sunday farmers market and the city’s first-Saturday food-truck gatherings bring recurring activity to the downtown streets. A few blocks away, Clermont Historic Village assembles several preserved buildings, including the 1925 train depot and the former Cooper Memorial Library building. This is also where the Townsend House interprets James and Sallie Townsend, remembered as Clermont’s first Black residents after their arrival in 1887. James ran a store and helped establish St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church and the first local school for Black children; Sallie worked as a midwife. Their circa-1895 house was moved to the village in 2002 and opened there in 2005.

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Athletic training is unusually visible for a city of Clermont’s size. The 10-mile Clay Loop follows unpaved roads through the ridge landscape and is used by residents as well as elite runners. The National Training Center, part of Orlando Health South Lake Hospital, combines a track, pool, athletic fields, performance services, and community fitness programs. Its facilities serve school, collegiate, professional, amateur, and local participants. Clermont’s 2026 events calendar reinforces that emphasis: triathlons, footraces, cycling events, and rowing or paddling competitions repeatedly use Lake Minneola, Waterfront Park, Lake Hiawatha Preserve, and nearby roads. Those routes and facilities span several parts of town, from the clay roads outside the core to the hospital campus and downtown waterfront.

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Clermont also supports indoor cultural life at the Clermont Performing Arts Center, whose mainstage and black-box theater host concerts, plays, comedy, and community productions. That venue broadens a public calendar strongly associated with lakes and endurance sports. The city’s history remains close to those current routines. The Citrus Tower recalls a landscape dominated by groves; the Townsend House preserves the work of residents excluded from many early civic records; and the old depot reflects the transportation that connected agricultural Clermont to wider markets. In present-day downtown, the Sunday market, Historic Village, restaurants, and Lake Minneola trail occupy adjoining pieces of the same district. On event weekends, market stalls and the Townsend House sit only a short distance from the Lake Minneola course used by runners, cyclists, and paddlers.