William Collins
Orlando, Orange County, Florida
Marker Inscription
Orlando Reeves in whose honor our city Orlando was named killed in this vicinity by Indians September 1835 “How sleep the brave who sink to rest by all their country's wishes blest" WM. Collins Erected by the students of Cherokee Junior High School 1939 Restored in 1992 by the 1942 Orlando High School Graduates at their 50th class reunion
Erected by Students of Cherokee Junior High School
The Story
This monument, raised by junior high students in 1939, records the local tradition that the city of Orlando took its name from Orlando Reeves, said to have been killed near here by Indians in 1835. That was the eve of the Second Seminole War, when settlers pushing into central Florida clashed with the Seminole people resisting removal. Historians note the Reeves story is a cherished legend rather than documented fact, and the city's naming has competing accounts — but the marker itself has become part of Orlando's civic memory.
Why it matters
Whether history or folklore, the marker shows how communities craft origin stories to root themselves in the past, set against the very real frontier violence of Florida's Seminole Wars.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Orlando Reeves
Related events
- · Second Seminole War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Odet Philippe's Marker
Safety Harbor, FL
Odet Philippe, born in Lyon, France, in 1787, settled on the shores of Tampa Bay and became one of the earliest non-Native pioneers of what is now Pinellas County, dying at this site in 1869. He is widely remembered for introducing citrus—especially grapefruit—cultivation to the region, helping seed an industry that would define Florida. His homestead at Safety Harbor sat amid ancient Native American shell mounds along the bay. His grave marks the resting place of a genuine frontier settler whose influence outlived him by generations.
Roger Lacy (Lacey) Historic Marker
Thunderbolt, GA
In 1734, just a year after James Oglethorpe founded Georgia as Britain's thirteenth colony, Roger Lacy arrived in the young settlement of Savannah. He spent much of his time upriver at Augusta, a frontier trading post established to anchor the lucrative deerskin trade with the Creek, Cherokee, and other Native nations of the interior. As both a licensed trader and the post's commander, Lacy occupied the volatile seam where colonial ambition met Indigenous power, a role that demanded diplomacy as much as commerce.
Spanish Cattle Ranching
Gainesville, FL
In the 1600s, the region around present-day Gainesville lay at the heart of Spanish Florida's cattle-ranching frontier, worked largely through the coerced labor of the Timucua people who had lived in the area for generations. The largest of these operations was the La Chua ranch, whose name — itself a Spanish reshaping of an Indigenous word — echoes the layered histories of the place. These ranches supplied beef and hides to St. Augustine and beyond until raids and the collapse of the mission system swept them away in the early 1700s.
Peter Raulerson
Okeechobee, FL
Peter Raulerson was among the pioneer settlers of the Lake Okeechobee frontier, and this marker honors his service as mayor of the newly organized City of Okeechobee in 1915-1916. The town took shape in the early twentieth century as the Florida East Coast Railroad pushed south, opening the rich lands north of the great lake to cattle ranching, fishing, and farming. Serving in the city's first years of incorporated government, Raulerson helped steer a raw frontier settlement into an organized municipality.