DeLand 
When Henry DeLand called his new town the Athens of Florida, he was making a promise as much as a nickname. He wanted a place of culture, education, and beauty on the model of ancient Athens, and he ordered his priorities to match: a school before a church, a college before a courthouse, and the modern infrastructure to sustain both. It was an audacious vision for a frontier settlement carved out of pine scrub and persimmon groves.
The substance behind the slogan is what made it stick. DeLand founded Florida's first private college — the DeLand Academy of 1883, which became Stetson University — and the town became an early adopter of electric lighting, frequently credited with some of the first incandescent streetlights in the state. Broad, tree-lined Woodland Boulevard and a downtown of handsome brick buildings gave the ideal a physical form residents could walk through.
More than a century and a half later, the name still holds. It appears on the Athens Theatre marquee, in the heritage archives, and in the way DeLand talks about itself — a small city that has always believed its worth is measured in learning, art, and civic pride. Few Florida nicknames have stayed so faithful to their founder's original intent.