At 5:45pm in Mount Dora, you hear it: the electric hum of golf carts leaving driveways. By 6pm, they’re all headed one direction — west, toward the lake. Sunset is a golf cart event here. The carts are street-legal on roads 35mph and under, which is most of downtown. So
For a town of 16,000, Mount Dora has a ridiculous number of bookstores. All independent, all with a personality. Barrel of Books and Games: Beer, board games, and used sci-fi. Hemingway the cat runs security.The Owl’s Attic: New releases, local authors, and a kids’ section that smells like goldfish crackers.The
Donnelly Street is famous for its live oaks. They’re older than the town, wider than the road, and protected like celebrities. The city has an “arborist clause” that stops construction if roots are threatened. The big one at 5th and Donnelly was planted around 1840. Its limbs stretch 120 feet
The IceHouse Theatre sits at 1100 N Unser St in a building that literally made ice. Built in 1923, it stored 300-pound blocks for the steamboats and citrus houses. In 1948 the blocks melted, the business closed, and the building sat empty until 1975. That’s when a group of actors
Third Friday of every month, 6-9pm, Donnelly Street closes and Mount Dora throws a block party. It’s called “Evening in the Park,” but everyone calls it Night Market. Vendors set up under string lights: handmade jewelry, candles that smell like orange blossom, hot sauce with names that dare you. Food
Citrus built Mount Dora, froze out in 1894, and never fully came back. Until now. Small groves and backyard trees are having a moment, and chefs are using fruit you can’t buy at Publix. Start at the Saturday Farmers Market in Donnelly Park. November to April you’ll find Satsumas, Meyer
Look out at Lake Dora on a Saturday and you’ll see it: a stubby sailboat with one huge sail, no jib, and a cockpit that looks like it belongs on a bathtub. That’s a catboat, and Mount Dora is weirdly obsessed with them. Catboats were workboats in the 1800s, designed
Started in 2018, the Mount Dora Music Festival turned Simpson Cove into Lake County’s living room. Three days in March, national blues and jazz acts play on a stage 30 feet from Lake Dora. You bring a lawn chair, cooler, and maybe a dance partner. No bad seats, no Nashville
The Dora Canal connects Lake Dora to Lake Eustis, and it lives up to the hype. For one mile, bald cypress trees line both banks and lean over the water until their canopies touch. Spanish moss hangs low enough to brush your paddle. On a quiet morning you’ll see herons
September in Evans Park. Lake Dora 100 yards away. Zero salt water. Mount Dora’s Seafood Festival leans into the irony and nobody cares. Lobster rolls, crab cakes, shrimp po’boys, conch fritters. Vendors haul it in from the coasts. You eat it under live oaks while bands play on the stage.
