Thornton Park

This guide to Thornton Park in Orlando opens on November 15, 1965, when Walt Disney stood up in a hotel ballroom on the shore of Lake Eola and announced what he called Project X, his only public appearance in the city. It traces the twist that follows: this same neighborhood, laid out by developer James Thornton around 1915 on land bought decades earlier for pennies an acre, was about to be reshaped by the boom Disney's announcement set off, as Orlando's growth pulled west toward the new parks. By the 1980s, residents had a nickname for the lake beside you: Lake Eerie-ola, for the crime that crept into its empty houses and dark porches.