Some historians date Orlando's name to around 1836 when a soldier named Orlando Reeves allegedly died in the area, during the war against the Seminole Indian tribe. It seems, however, that Orlando Reeves (sometimes Rees) operated a sugar mill and plantation about thirty miles to the north at Spring Garden in Volusia County, and pioneer settlers simply found his name carved into a tree and assumed it was a marker for a grave site. They thus referred to the area as "Orlando's grave" and later simply "Orlando."
Orlando Museum of Art, which has ongoing exhibitions of American portraits and landscapes, American impressionist works, and art of the ancient Americas.
The first permanent settler was cattleman Aaron Jernigan, who acquired land along Lake Holden by the terms of the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. But, most pioneers did not arrive until after the Third Seminole War in the 1850s.
The Orlando area's major freeway is Interstate 4, which crosses Florida's Turnpike southwest of Downtown Orlando. It is also served by the toll roads of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority, particularly the East-West Expressway (SR 408), which crosses I-4 downtown.
The convention industry is also huge in the area due to the proximity to the area attractions. The Orange County Convention Center is the one of the large convention complexes in the United States. The Orlando International Airport, a world-class facility, and is one of the most heavily travelled airports in the world.
The city of Orlando is the county seat of Orange County, Florida.
The Orlando Sundogs were a minor-league soccer team in the A-League that played in the Citrus Bowl. They were disbanded in 1997 after only playing one year.
Walt Disney's concept for Disney World was of a larger, more expansive version of Disneyland, so that it could constantly expand and not be as constrained by the need for land that Disneyland suffered from. Walt Disney World also was to be a sort of "Disneyland of the future" where breakthroughs in science and technology could coexist with the original Disney vision of themed entertainment.
After most of the land had been bought, the story was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel on October 20, 1965. A press conference was soon organized for November 15. At the conference, Walt Disney explained the plans for the site, including EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, which was to be a futuristic city.