Lake County, Florida
| Lake County, Florida | |||||
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Old Lake County Courthouse
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 Location in the U.S. state of Florida |
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 Florida's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | May 27, 1887 | ||||
| Seat | Tavares | ||||
| Largest city | Clermont | ||||
| Area | |||||
| • Total | 1,157 sq mi (2,997 km2) | ||||
| • Land | 938 sq mi (2,429 km2) | ||||
| • Water | 219 sq mi (567 km2), 18.9% | ||||
| Population (est.) | |||||
| • (2015) | 325,875 | ||||
| • Density | 317/sq mi (122/km²) | ||||
| Congressional districts | 5th, 10th, 11th | ||||
| Time zone | Eastern: UTC-5/-4 | ||||
| Website | www |
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Coordinates: 28°46′N 81°43′W / 28.77°N 81.72°W
Lake County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2010 census, the population was 297,052. Its county seat is Tavares, and its largest city is Clermont.
Lake County is included in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Lake County was created in 1887 from portions of Sumter and Orange counties. It was named for the many lakes contained within its borders (250 named lakes and 1,735 other bodies of water).
During the Great Depression, citrus became the leading industry in Lake County.
In 1949 the Groveland Four, Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin, were wrongly convicted of rape. The convictions were eventually overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in a case argued by NAACP special counsel Thurgood Marshall. However, Ernest Thomas had already been killed by a posse. Samuel Shepard and Walter Irvin were shot by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall while being transferred, in handcuffs, to the Lake County jail. The descendants of the Groveland Four petitioned Florida governor Rick Scott in 2012 for an apology from the State of Florida, citing new evidence from an FBI file on the case that no rape ever occurred. The 2012 book Devil in the Grove documents this episode.
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