Historic Orlando park attracts breezes, bard, visions of growth
Orlando’s Lake Eola Park bustles on spring weekends. Swans glide among people-powered boats shaped in their image. Tall bamboo shoots wave where a wall of colorful sweet peas once reigned near Rosalind Avenue — close to the giant reclining sculpture that’s a favorite of kids, who perch on the figure’s big stone hand while parents snap their photos.
It’s a vital spot, notes Lynn Long, a champion of the park. “The last year with the pandemic has really highlighted the need for green space,” she notes, “especially in the downtown area when the density is so high.”
Long is one of the forces behind the Orlando Land Trust, which has worked to buy and preserve a parcel of land at Central Boulevard and Magnolia Avenue, so the land could be added to the park as a gateway. She and another lifelong Orlandoan, Eugenia Sefcik, spearheaded the project, along with a powerhouse board that included former Orlando Mayors Glenda Hood and Bill Frederick.
Without the effort, the corner could have “become yet another highrise project, casting a heavy shadow over the jewel of the city,” Hood and Frederick wrote in the Sentinel in January. Instead, the trustees plan to donate the land to the city with a deed restriction that it can only be used for public park space.
Simply ‘the lake’
Early settlers called Lake Eola simply “the lake” but also referred to it as Sandy Beach, after a stretch of sand that would appear along the east end during dry weather.
We know a lot about the park area’s history, but that vowel-packed name — Eola — bears a trace of mystery. It’s not a common moniker. There is an Eola, Texas, population about 200, reportedly inspired by a small creek named for Aeolus, Greek god of the winds.
Visitors take in the flora at Orlando’s Lake Eola Park in the 1950s. A wall of sweet peas (at rear left) offered a popular backdrop for family photos.
On the breezy northwest side of our Lake Eola, William A. Lovell built a steam sawmill in 1854 and also built a corral for 300 head of cattle on the site of the future Orlando Public Library. But it was Jacob Summerlin, the cattle king, who put the lake on the map, when he arrived in tiny Orlando in 1873 and bought it and 200 acres around it, reportedly for 25 cents an acre.
As for that mysterious name, Orlandoan Kena Fries declared in 1938 that one of Jacob’s sons, Robert Summerlin, had dubbed the lake “Eola” in the 1870s “in memory of the beautiful young girl, his bride-to-be, who died from typhoid fever two weeks before the appointed wedding day.”
But according to historian Eve Bacon, Robert’s brother Sam maintained that Eola was just a friend of the Summerlin brothers, never a sweetheart. Sam also said he had no idea what had happened to good old Eola.
As for Robert Summerlin, he became an attorney and was elected to Orlando’s City Council in 1876 and to a term as mayor in 1880, after which he moved to Bartow, as did his father and others in his family. In the 1890s, he apparently moved to San
Antonio, Texas, taking the secret of the name Eola with him.
What’s Shakin’?
This month, the Orlando Shakepeare Festival returns to its roots at Lake Eola Park with performances of Shakepeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” through April 17 at the Walt Disney Amphitheater. The theater group’s inaugural season took place at the amphitheater in April 1988. Details: www.orlandoshakes.org or call 407-447-1700.
Also this month, appointments to visit the Morse Museum of Art in Winter Park are free on Fridays (April 9 through 30). Appointments must be made in advance and are available, space permitting, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fridays. Online, you can find the free-Friday appointments under the “Spring at the Morse” ticket category at MorseMuseum.org, or call 407-644-1429.
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at joydickinson@icloud. com, FindingJoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter to Florida Flashback, c/o Dickinson, P.O. Box 1942, Orlando, FL 32802.