Biohazard Cleanup Near Ocoee Commons Ocoee, FL

Ocoee is a city in Orange County, Florida, just west of Orlando in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford metropolitan area.

Ocoee's name is a Cherokee word for the passionflower, Passiflora incarnata, which grew wild in the area.

Ocoee began in the mid-1850s when Dr. J. D. Starke brought a malaria-stricken party to the clean waters of the lake now called Starke Lake; the town was platted in 1883, incorporated as a town in 1923 and as a city in 1925.

Ocoee grew as a citrus town on the south shore of Lake Apopka, connected to larger markets by two railroad depots.

On Election Day, November 2, 1920, after Black residents Mose Norman and July Perry attempted to vote, a white mob attacked Ocoee's Black community in what scholars call the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history - dozens were killed, at least 24 Black homes were burned, Perry was lynched, and the town's roughly 500 Black residents were driven out almost entirely.

After the 1920 massacre, Ocoee remained an all-white sundown town for decades; the city commission formally acknowledged the massacre in 2018, the city issued a formal apology in 2020, and a remembrance area at Lakefront Park was designated in 2019.

Modern Ocoee is a fast-growing Orlando suburb - its population reached 47,295 at the 2020 census and was estimated at about 51,932 by 2025.

Ocoee has about 15,588 households, roughly 73% of its homes are owner-occupied, and its households are larger than the Florida norm at about 3.13 people each.