Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Gotha Gotha, FL

Gotha is a small census-designated place in Orange County, tucked between Ocoee and Windermere at the western edge of the Orlando metropolitan area.

Gotha was officially designated on April 20, 1885, by German immigrant H. A. Hempel, who named it after his hometown of Gotha, Germany, and had acquired about 1,000 acres to lay out the town plat.

Horticulturalist and naturalist Dr. Henry Nehrling began buying land in Gotha in 1885 and settled there permanently in 1902 after working at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Nehrling created Palm Cottage Gardens in Gotha, a tropical garden that became a popular tourist destination in the early 1900s and helped establish Florida's ornamental horticulture industry; he became best known for his caladiums.

Nehrling Gardens, the surviving Palm Cottage Gardens property, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 and now serves as an education center and botanical garden.

Zion Lutheran Church, founded in 1915 on Hempel Avenue, reflects Gotha's German roots and still anchors the historic village center.

Residents organized the Gotha Rural Settlement Association to protect the community's few remaining historic structures from the encroaching urban sprawl of greater Orlando.

Gotha had 2,217 residents at the 2020 census, up about 16% from 1,915 in 2010, packed into just 1.7 square miles of land.