The City of Eustis holds a festival every year which begins on the last Friday of February and runs through Sunday and has been held since 1902.

This festival, referred to simply as GeorgeFest, is recognized today as the longest ongoing annual event held in honor of George Washington, first President of the United States.

General Eustis, prominent in the Seminole Wars, had skirmished with the Indians on the south shore, near present-day Tavares, Florida.

Among the earliest settlers was Guilford David "G.D." Clifford, who established a store and began the first mail service for the new settlement.

The railroad arrived in 1880, the first train coming from Astor to Fort Mason, where passengers and freight made lake steamer connections to Leesburg, Helena, Yalaha, Bloomfield, Lane Park, and Tavares.

Says Eustis historian Louise Carter, "Even though the freeze brought the town's economy to a standstill, Mr. Clifford kept his lakefront general store open and extended credit until people could recover."

According to an 1887 business directory, the Clifford Store on Lake Eustis sold groceries, hardware, building material, fertilizers, stoves, crockery, glassware, hay, and grain.

The opera house, on the second floor, was a cultural center of Eustis and a wide swath of Central Florida.

The eighteen-room house at the corner of Bay Street and Bates Avenue today houses the Eustis Historical Museum and Preservation Society, and takes visitors back to the gracious Lake County lifestyle of one hundred-odd years ago.

The city limits are defined by Eudora, Abrams, and CR 44 (bypass) on the east, CR44 to the north, US Hwy 441 to the south and Lake Eustis and Florida Hospital Waterman to the west.

When the rural statistics are compiled into the city stats, the total population of Eustis topped 50,000 in 2000.