Qualla: The Villages, Florida https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/aerial-pickleball-courts.jpg Qualla: The Villages, Florida https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida The Villages, Florida: Introduction https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida/ Photo credit Whoisjohngalt, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fifty-six golf courses. Over 100 recreation centers. More than 3,500 resident-led clubs. Golf cart bridges spanning state highways. A population of 79,077 where 81.6 percent of residents are over 65, and children under 19 are effectively barred from permanent residence. The Villages is not a town in any conventional sense. It is an experiment - the largest age-restricted master-planned community in the United States, sprawling across Sumter, Marion, and Lake counties in central Florida, governed not by a mayor and city council but by 17 community development districts. It began in the 1960s as a mail-order land scheme run by a Michigan businessman. Today it is a self-contained universe where retirees from the Midwest and Northeast come to reinvent the final act of American life, complete with fabricated historical markers that give the place a past it never had.

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Image: Whoisjohngalt | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/djjs-the-villages-florida-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Villages, Florida: From Mail-Order Lots to a Private Empire https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida/ Photo credit WikiGnosis at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Villages started with a hustle. In the 1960s, Michigan businessman Harold Schwartz began selling parcels of central Florida scrubland through mail-order advertisements. When a 1968 federal law banned real estate sales by mail, Schwartz and his partner Al Tarrson pivoted, deve...

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Image: WikiGnosis at English Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/djjs-the-villages-florida-from-mail-order-lots-to-a-private-empire.mp3 0:06 2 full The Villages, Florida: The Invented Past https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida/ Photo credit Iamorangelightning, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk through the Villages' three town centers - Spanish Springs, Lake Sumter Landing, Brownwood Paddock Square - and you encounter historical plaques mounted on buildings, recounting colorful tales of frontier settlers, shipwrecks, and pioneer commerce. None of it happened. The p...

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Image: Iamorangelightning | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/djjs-the-villages-florida-the-invented-past.mp3 0:06 3 full The Villages, Florida: A World on Golf Carts https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida/ Photo credit Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Villages operates 56 golf courses with 729 holes - 42 nine-hole executive courses, 12 championship courses, and two specialty putting courses. Golf is free on the executive courses for residents who pay the monthly amenities fee of approximately $189. But the golf cart is mor...

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Image: Ebyabe | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/djjs-the-villages-florida-a-world-on-golf-carts.mp3 0:06 4 full The Villages, Florida: The Politics of Paradise https://qualla.com/the-villages-florida/ Photo credit Whoisjohngalt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Villages is a political force. With approximately 80 percent voter turnout and registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats two-to-one, the community commands attention from national campaigns. It holds the largest veteran population of any community in the United States wit...

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]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/j/j/s/the-villages-florida-wp/djjs-the-villages-florida-the-politics-of-paradise.mp3 0:06 5 full