DeLand Local History
The Athens of Florida
How a citrus grower’s vision became a university town with brick streets and a century-old marquee. The people, places, and moments that made DeLand.
Persimmon Hollow: Before DeLand Had a Name
Long before it was the Athens of Florida, the high pine ridge here was called Persimmon Hollow for the wild persimmons that grew thick around its natural springs.
Read the storyHenry A. DeLand & the Founding, 1876
A New York saleratus manufacturer fell in love with the Volusia ridge in 1876 and set out to build a town on culture and education — donating the land for its main street, school, and first church.
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1876–presentThe "Athens of Florida" — A Nickname With a Mission
Henry DeLand didn't just name a town; he named an ideal, calling it the Athens of Florida and backing that promise with Florida's first private college and early electric streetlights.
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1883–presentStetson University & John B. Stetson, 1883
Founded as the DeLand Academy in a Baptist church lecture room, Stetson is Florida's oldest private university — and it owes its name to the famous hat maker who bankrolled its growth.
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1922–presentThe Athens Theatre, 1922
A vaudeville house and silent-movie palace named for the city's Athenian ideal, the Athens Theatre opened in 1922 and, after a full restoration, still lights up downtown DeLand.
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1929–presentThe Historic Volusia County Courthouse, 1929
A Neoclassical landmark with a copper dome and stained-glass rotunda, DeLand's 1929 courthouse anchored county justice for over seventy years and now serves as a cultural showplace.
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1886–presentThe DeLand House Museum & West Volusia Historical Society
Henry DeLand's own 1886 home is now a museum, lovingly restored by the West Volusia Historical Society to tell the story of the city and the county it seeded.
Read the storyBill Dreggors, "Mr. DeLand"
A power-company lineman turned folk historian, Bill Dreggors spent a second lifetime preserving West Volusia's past — earning the affectionate title "Mr. DeLand."
Read the storyAfrican American Museum of the Arts & Historic Spring Hill
Founded in 1994 in the heart of DeLand's historic Spring Hill community, the African American Museum of the Arts is the area's only museum devoted to African American and Caribbean art and culture.
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1985–presentHistoric Downtown & MainStreet DeLand
DeLand was one of Florida's first Main Street communities and is the only town in the nation to win both the Great American Main Street Award and the national America's Main Streets contest.
Read the storyDeLand Naval Air Station, WWII
For three intense wartime years, DeLand's little municipal airfield became a U.S. Navy base training thousands of pilots and gunners for the Pacific — at a real and sometimes fatal cost.
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1894–presentCassadaga Spiritualist Camp
Just south of DeLand near Lake Helen sits Cassadaga, a Spiritualist community founded in 1894 by a traveling medium and known today as the "Psychic Capital of the World."
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