Other than building great outdoor projects, here's what we love most about this city.

1. Named After a Boston Suburb — By the Man Who Founded It

Longwood's founder, Edward Warren Henck, arrived from Boston by steamboat in 1873 and named the new settlement after a Boston suburb he had helped lay out as a young engineer. Henck went on to lead the construction of the first post-Civil War railroad in Florida, connecting Sanford and Orlando, with regular service beginning in November 1880. Few cities in Central Florida can trace their name and their infrastructure back to the same founding figure.

2. The Oldest City in Seminole County

Historic Longwood is the oldest city in Seminole County, Florida. The 190-acre Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, preserves 37 contributing structures from the 19th and early 20th centuries — a level of architectural continuity that most fast-growing Central Florida suburbs simply don't have.

3. The Bradlee-McIntyre House

The 1885 Bradlee-McIntyre House is a Queen Anne-style winter cottage and the only remaining cottage of its size built during Florida's first tourism boom in the 1880s. It was rescued from demolition in 1973 by preservationist Grace Bradford and the Central Florida Society for Historic Preservation, and now stands as the centerpiece of Longwood's Historic District. It is the kind of landmark that gives a community a genuine sense of place.

4. The Senator — Once the Oldest Tree in the World

The Senator, a bald cypress in Longwood's Big Tree Park, was approximately 3,500 years old, 125 feet tall, and had a trunk diameter of more than 11 feet at the time of its loss in 2012 — making it, for generations, the largest and oldest bald cypress on Earth. For decades it stood as Longwood's most extraordinary natural landmark, a living connection to a Florida that existed long before Spanish explorers ever arrived.

5. Founded in Part by Russian Nobility

Peter Demens, born Pyotr Alekseyevich Dementyev, arrived in Longwood in 1881 as an exiled Russian nobleman who had lost a political feud under the Czar. He purchased 30 acres of groves and a stake in a local sawmill, supplying lumber and building materials throughout the region before going on to found the city of St. Petersburg, Florida. It's the kind of origin story that makes Longwood's quiet, historic streets considerably more interesting than they first appear.