Coleman

Coleman was settled in 1882 and named for Dr. B.F. Coleman, listed among the area's early citizens in an 1880s Florida gazette. Like most of this part of Sumter County, its early economy was agricultural — oranges were the main money crop, supplemented by cotton, cattle, sheep, and hogs. The railroad gave the small town its purpose as a shipping point, and a handful of historic structures survive from that era, including an 1897 jail that has since been repurposed into a home-and-garden store, a small landmark of the town's frontier days.

For most of the twentieth century Coleman remained a tiny rail-and-farm town, the kind of place easy to drive through without noticing. Its population has long hovered in the hundreds. What put Coleman on the national map came in December 1995, when the Federal Correctional Complex opened just outside town in unincorporated Sumter County. FCC Coleman grew into one of the largest federal prison complexes in the country — multiple penitentiaries and correctional institutions plus a satellite camp — and a major regional employer, with well over 1,000 staff.

Today Coleman sits squarely in the path of Central Florida's growth. It's minutes from Wildwood, where the Florida Turnpike meets I-75, and just south of the relentless expansion of The Villages into southern Sumter County. That position — a tiny historic town wedged between a massive federal complex and a fast-growing retirement and logistics corridor — defines Coleman's present and likely its future, even as the town itself stays small and rural in character.