"One of the best-known cities among Brazilians, it's also Mickey's home and that's where many of the vacation condominiums are located. It's an area that also offers residential areas like Celebration, as well as numerous tourist attractions. It's now full of stores, commerce, restaurants and where we see tourists from all over the world, all year round." - Andrea Pointon.
Local historians have offered many variations on the origin of the town's name. Most agree that Kissimmee is a modern spelling of a tribal word. The book, Florida Indians and the Invasion from Europe, by Jerald T. Milanich, links "Kissimmee" to a village of Jororo, one of Florida's lesser-known tribes.
Historian John Hann researched Spanish documents about missions established to convert the Jororo and other groups to Christianity at the end of the 17th century. Spanish records indicate that a mission was built near the tribe's main village, also called Jororo.
Another mission was called Atissimi. Milanich writes: "Hann suggests that the name Atissimi, sometimes given as Jizimi and Tisimi, may be the source of the modern place name Kissimmee." A Spanish map from 1752 used the name "Cacema", which evolved into the current spelling of Kissimmee.
The 1700s brought new people to Florida and saw its ancient tribes plunge into history. Creeks from the southeast joined forces with Africans fleeing slavery. European domination - first by the Spanish, followed by the British and then the Americans - erased the last villages of Florida's natives.
The new tribes, which would later include the young "chief" Osceola, moved inland to Florida in search of refuge. The land of pines, cypresses and palmettos between the St. John and Kissimmee rivers provided a safe haven. This haven for mosquitoes remained the remote homeland of the Seminoles during the 18th century.
The city of Kissimmee was originally a small trading post on the north shore of Lake Tohopekaliga, known as the community of Allendale. After the Civil War, this area was included in the purchase of four million acres of swamps and plains by Hamilton Disston, owner of the Disston Saw Company in Philadelphia. The sale price of the land totaled $1 million, at 25 cents per acre!
The $1 million infusion to the state of Florida supposedly rescued the state from financial disaster. In January 1881, Disston contracted to drain the area and deepen the Kissimmee River so that products could be shipped to the Gulf of Mexico and other points. Many steamboat captains sailed up the chain of lakes from Kissimmee to the Gulf with cargoes of cypress wood and sugar cane.
In 1920, Kissimmee's population increased to more than 2,700 people as a result of Florida's real estate boom. In the 1930s, the cattle industry began to flourish in the area. However, citrus and other crops remained the predominant industry. The construction of Kissimmee Airport in the 1940s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in preparation for U.S. involvement in World War II caused Kissimmee's population to increase by 38% to 3,700 residents.
City leaders, wanting to continue Kissimmee's prosperous history, encouraged growth by attracting retirees to the area during the 1950s. This effort spurred growth by almost 60%. The next period of growth came in the 1970s with the development of Walt Disney World and other tourist attractions. Since the debut of Walt Disney World in 1971, the city's population doubled from 7,500 to 15,000 in 1980. The population doubled again in the 1980s to 30,000.
Source: Kissimmee City Hall.
