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One Courthouse Square
Inverness, FL
34450
Museum Hours
M-F 10am - 4pm
352-341-6429
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The History
of Citrus County
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Citrus County, which was established in 1887, has appropriately
dubbed itself the "Nature Coast." Much of its territory
is preserved in state forests and parks, including "Nature's
Fish Bowl" Homosassa Springs, Lake Tsala Apopka, the manatee
sanctuaries at Crystal River, and the site of Seminole War-era
Ft. Cooper. Former Senator David Levy Yulee operated a plantation
in the vicinity of Homosassa, Florida in Citrus County, and
a variety of sweet orange was cultivated there and appropriately
named the "Homosassa" orange.
 The original county seat was located at Mannfield, and later
moved to Inverness, which was named after it's sister city in
Scotland by a settler of Scottish descent. It appears that Mannfield
was intended as a temporary county seat only. The county commissioners
originally met at a local church, while court functions were
conducted in the Moffatt and Gaffney residences, the latter
of which rented for the sum of $19 per month. Judge E. C. May
moved to Citrus County in 1892. At this time the county seat
had just been moved to Inverness in a referendum that Mannfield
proponents questioned. May writes that an injunction was sought
from the closest judge, sitting in Dade City, but he had taken
the train to Tampa by the time the rider arrived from Citrus
County. Eventually a writ was obtained but the rider fell off
his mule and could not serve the papers until after the Mannfield
courthouse had been stripped of its records. Judge May also
describes the "new wood courthouse" in Inverness with
"the wire grass ... still living under it," and situated
on a block otherwise covered with freshly-cut pine stumps.
Both views of the original Inverness courthouse described by
Judge May are from Hampton Dunn's 1976 history of Citrus County,
Back Home. In one, county prisoners wearing striped uniforms
are depicted maintaining the town's Main Street. In 1911 the
wooden courthouse was replaced, on the same spot, by a stone
structure. The architects, J. R. MacEachron and W. R. Biggers,
reportedly used the Polk County Courthouse as a model; the style
has been described as "eclectic, with elements of Neo-Classical,
Italian Renaissance, Prairie School and Mission styles."
The building includes a copper cupola with a clock face on each
of the four sides, topped with a belvedere with miniature columns.
Construction was by the Read-Parker Construction Company, at
a cost of $49,965, plus an additional $875 to move the old courthouse.
The black-and-white postcard view dates from the early 1960's.
The building still stands in downtown Inverness, although it
is no longer used for judicial functions.
The yellow-brick 1912 Citrus County Courthouse, which replaced
the original 1892 wood structure, recently underwent restoration
under supervision of the Citrus County Historical Society. After
peeling off layer upon layer added over the years, workers uncovered
terrazzo floors and marble wainscoting. Transom windows that
had been painted over and nailed shut were refinished and re-hinged.
Old photographs of the courthouse gave clues to what the hidden
walls, floors, and ceilings looked like. Society members and
architects even watched old reels of the 1961 Elvis Presley
movie Follow That Dream, in which the closing courthouse scene
took place in the second floor courtroom.
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