A Quintessential Character Town: Tavares, “America’s Seaplane City”.

Founded in 1880 by Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, a newspaper and railroad man from a Creole family in New Orleans. He gave it the surname of a Portuguese ancestor. In 1883 a post office was established; then a hotel, three stores, a sawmill, and eight cottages; the city was incorporated in 1919.