While traveling to Mount Dora or
surrounding areas, I always made it a point to take the route through the small
town, well, the community of Mt. Plymouth. Looking up the community and seeing it
has a population of just over 4,000, the road goes through the area quickly.
There are a few aspects of the community that are very interesting and quite
historic. Firstly, Mt. Plymouth was put on the map when in 1926, a large hotel
was built. The Mount Plymouth Hotel cost $350,000 to build and many notable
celebrities and famous people stopped and stayed there. Numerous rumors
surround the town (more stated throughout this blog) but some of the people
known to stay at the hotel were Connie Mack, Babe Ruth, and Al Capone. The community
was easily accessible due to there being an airstrip next to the hotel. During
the same year the hotel was built, multiple golf courses were to be built in
the style of the popular Scottish golf course, St. Andrews. Due to the crash in
the Florida real estate in the 1920s, the town wasn’t able to build what they
had hoped but there were still numerous courses built where celebrities, athletes,
and prominent people came to play. Unfortunately, one of the main courses that
had remained, the Mount Plymouth Golf Club closed in 2007.
(The abandoned golf course)
Once fewer people came to the hotel as the
decades passed, in 1959 the Florida Central Academy leased and used the hotel
and area to open a boys boarding school and they later began accepting girls
around 1971. The school operated until 1983 and the building was sadly
condemned. Unfortunately, as what happens to most large and abandoned
buildings, careless vandals came in and a few years after closing, a fire began
and the building was destroyed – more history was lost. Even though the hotel
is gone, spread throughout the community are a few remnants of the beautiful
Sam Stoltz’s “Gingerbread” style homes. These homes were built in and around the
1920s and are reminiscent of being in a fairytale.
(One of Sam Stoltz's remaining homes built circa 1920s)
Uniquely, some myth revolves around one of
these homes in particular as well as Mt. Plymouth itself. Whether to call it
urban legend or myth, there is no true documentation that I could see but rumor
has it that Al Capone had a home in Mount Plymouth. His bookkeeper was known to
own one of the Stoltz’s homes. I won’t show the bookkeeper’s house or say which
one it is due to privacy reasons for the current owner (the lucky person!), but
rumored are to be tunnels under the house for the potential threat if police
were to track down Capone and raid the community. No one has yet to justify
these tunnels actually exist but thinking of the possibility is fun. The home
Capone is rumored to have owned (of course, not under his own name) is still
standing and near the road going through town. There is a large porch on the
second story that would make for a great lookout. Oddly enough, the pool in the
backyard was filled with concrete a long time ago. Capone supposedly owned
numerous vacation homes around Florida and understanding how easy it was to
access Mt. Plymouth with its own airstrip and golf resort-style town, it can be
easy to see why Capone and other celebrities chose to visit this community.
(Home rumored to have been owned by Al Capone)
Something else to think about is during
the 20s, Capone was thriving in Chicago and was very rich. The problem was his syndicate
had a lot of dirty money he needed to clean. Some historians have even
mentioned that Capone secretly invested through his contacts to clean his money
and invested in numerous properties and areas in Florida, such as the Mount
Plymouth Hotel. It’s fun to think of history and the possibilities and to try
and figure out the mysteries.
So, the next time you drive through the
area, take a little detour and explore some interesting history and see the
once-thriving vacation spot and look out – maybe you’ll see Babe Ruth and Al
Capone walking down the golf course, talking baseball while smoking cigars and
playing golf.
