Center Hill

Center Hill carries one of the more remarkable backstories in Sumter County. By the early 1800s the area near the Wahoo Swamp was home to a settlement of Black Seminoles and maroons — free and formerly enslaved people who lived among and alongside the Seminoles — at a place recorded as Peliklakaha, sometimes called "Abraham's Old Town" after a prominent Black Seminole leader. Accounts from a territorial-era envoy describe a community growing rice, corn, and peanuts. That settlement was destroyed during the Seminole wars, but it makes the ground beneath Center Hill some of the most historically significant in the county.

The modern town grew up later, as the Mobley, Beville, and other pioneer families settled the area in the late 1830s and 1840s. The name "Center Hill" is attributed to either an early postmaster or a local resident, and the city was officially incorporated in 1925. Its economy was farming from the start, and in the early twentieth century Center Hill became a serious vegetable shipper — known for green beans to the point of being called the "Green Bean Capital of the World," sending beans and peas by rail to Baltimore, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Detroit by the 1930s.

Agriculture still defines Center Hill today, though the crops have shifted toward cattle and beef. The town remains small — under 1,000 residents — and its industrial corridor is anchored by Central Beef Industries, a major beef-processing operation, alongside cattle ranches, groves, and a sand-and-gravel mine. It sits in the southeastern, farm-heavy corner of Sumter County, well off the tourist trail and a comfortable distance from the growth pressure reshaping the county's north end.