The Arts Festival is fine art. The Craft Fair is handmade everything else. Third weekend in October, 400+ crafters fill Donnelly Park and the streets around it. This is where you buy the stuff you actually use. Hand-poured soaps, cutting boards, metal yard art, crocheted everything, jams, hot sauce, jewelry
From Thanksgiving to January, downtown Mount Dora becomes a snow globe without snow. Light Up Mount Dora strings 2 million lights across buildings, trees, and the 30-foot tree in Donnelly Park. It started small in the 1980s with shop owners wrapping windows. Now it’s a full production. Crews start hanging
From Thanksgiving to January, downtown Mount Dora becomes a snow globe without snow. Light Up Mount Dora strings 2 million lights across buildings, trees, and the 30-foot tree in Donnelly Park. It started small in the 1980s with shop owners wrapping windows. Now it’s a full production. Crews start hanging
Three times a year — January, February, November — the fields at Renninger’s Twin Markets become an antique city. 800+ dealers from 30 states. 10,000+ shoppers. If you can’t find it here, it probably doesn’t exist. The Extravaganza is the big show. Regular weekends, Renninger’s has a flea market side
First weekend in February, 250,000 people descend on a town of 16,000. The Mount Dora Arts Festival takes over six blocks of downtown and turns them into one of the best juried art shows in the U.S. Sunshine Artist Magazine ranks it top 10 consistently. 300+ artists from 30 states
Inland towns don’t get lighthouses. Mount Dora built one anyway in 1988. The 35-foot tower at Grantham Pointe Park is officially a navigational aid for Lake Dora. Unofficially, it’s the town mascot. Ed Lunsford, a retired Coast Guard officer, thought the point needed a marker. The city agreed. Locals donated
Opened in 1883, the Lakeside Inn is the oldest continuously operating hotel in Florida. That’s not marketing copy. It’s on the National Register and it’s never closed, not for freezes, depressions, or hurricanes. Thomas Edison stayed here. Henry Ford, too. President Calvin Coolidge fished off the dock in 1930. The
John P. Donnelly didn’t just lay out downtown. He built the house that defines it. The Donnelly House at 535 N. Donnelly St went up in 1893 as his winter home. He was a Massachusetts businessman who spent summers up north and winters here. He hired Georgia architect George O.
Lake Dora is 4,475 acres of dark, tannic water that connects to the Harris Chain of Lakes. In the 1880s, that chain was I-4. Steamboats like the City of Hawkinsville ran scheduled routes from Jacksonville to Leesburg, and Mount Dora was the main stop. The trip took two days from Jacksonville with
Most Florida towns sell you on beachfront. Mount Dora sells you on altitude. At 184 feet above sea level, it’s one of the highest points in peninsular Florida, and that “mount” shaped the whole town. Settlers David Simpson, John P. Donnelly, and Ross C. Tremain platted the city in 1880.
