24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Zellwood, FL

Zellwood is a census-designated place in northwestern Orange County, named for Thomas Ellwood Zell, a Philadelphia advertising man who arrived in the area in 1876 and recruited northern friends — including former Civil War officers — to settle near Lakes Maggiore and Minore.

Zellwood became famous for its sweet corn, and agriculture dominated the local economy from the 1940s through the late 1990s.

Zellwood sits beside Lake Apopka, once a world-renowned bass-fishing lake with 29 fish camps, which became known as Florida's most polluted large lake after muck farms were carved from its north-shore marshes starting in 1941.

The Zellwood Drainage and Water Control District, created in 1941, oversaw roughly 20,000 acres of vegetable 'muck farms' farmed in the rich dark soil along Lake Apopka.

Under the Lake Apopka Restoration Act of 1996, the state spent about $100 million buying out the muck farms, and by 1999 all but one had been purchased for restoration — only Long & Scott Farms still grows Zellwood sweet corn today.

The community long celebrated its crop at the Zellwood Corn Festival, traditionally held in May, until the festival was discontinued in 2013.

Zellwood is an unusually old community for Florida — the median resident age is about 63 — and the 2010 census counted 2,817 residents, up about 11% from 2000.

Zellwood's roughly 1,500 households are overwhelmingly owner-occupiers, with more than four in five homes owned by the people who live in them.