Qualla: Florida Citrus Tower

Florida Citrus Tower: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5. Drop a coin into the slot at the top of the Florida Citrus Tower and listen. It falls 226 feet, pinging off the interior walls before hitting bottom with a faint, satisfying clink. That coin drop is the tower's most enduring attraction - outlasting the citrus groves it was built to showcase, the half-million annual visitors who once packed its observation deck, and even the orange-and-white paint scheme that defined its skyline silhouette for decades. Built in 1956 along US Highway 27 in Clermont, the tower rose above what was then a sea of citrus stretching to the horizon in every direction. Today those groves are gone, replaced by subdivisions and strip malls, but the tower still stands - a concrete anachronism that refuses to disappear.

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY 2.5

Florida Citrus Tower: When the Groves Stretched Forever

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5. In the 1950s, Lake County was the heart of Florida's citrus belt. Orange, grapefruit, and tangerine trees carpeted the rolling hills around Clermont, and the sweet smell of blossoms hung in the humid air every spring. The Citrus Tower was conceived as a way to show it all off - a...

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY 2.5

Florida Citrus Tower: Death by Turnpike and Deep Freeze

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5. The tower's decline came in two blows. The first was concrete: in 1964, Florida's Turnpike extended northward, giving travelers a faster route through Central Florida that bypassed US 27 entirely. Overnight, the steady stream of highway tourists thinned to a trickle. The second b...

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY 2.5

Florida Citrus Tower: Reinvention After Reinvention

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5. The tower changed hands repeatedly as each new owner tried to find a reason for its existence. In 1988, a tram was built to tour remaining citrus crops - a last attempt to connect the tower to its agricultural roots. In 1995, Greg Homan purchased the property and repainted it whi...

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY 2.5

Florida Citrus Tower: Roadside Relic, Unlikely Survivor

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5. The Florida Citrus Tower belongs to a vanishing breed of American roadside attraction - the kind built before interstate highways and theme parks changed how people traveled. Its neighbors in this category are mostly gone. But the tower endures, partly because it is genuinely tal...

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY 2.5