Ormond Beach — The Birthplace of Speed, Quieter Than Its Famous Neighbor

What Actually Makes Ormond Beach Different

Ormond Beach was settled in 1875 by colonists from New Britain, Connecticut, who initially called it New Britain, and was incorporated as the Town of Ormond on April 22, 1880 -- named for James Ormond II, whose 18th-century plantation sat just north of town. "Beach" was added to the name in 1950. The St. Johns and Halifax River Railway reached town in 1886, and the first bridge across the Halifax River followed in 1887, opening the barrier-peninsula beachside to the mainland settlement. That bridge crossing is still the city's defining geographic fact: Ormond Beach is split by the Halifax River into a mainland core, where downtown, City Hall, and most of the population live, and a narrower beachside strip -- largely the unincorporated community of Ormond-by-the-Sea -- reached today by the Granada Bridge along State Road 40.

The city's identity as the "Birthplace of Speed" is not a marketing invention layered on afterward -- it is a documented, dated sequence of events. Wealthy northerners wintering at the Hotel Ormond (built 1887-88, purchased and expanded by Henry Flagler starting in 1890 into what was once the largest wooden structure in the United States, with 400 rooms) discovered that the hard-packed sand made an ideal test track for the new automobile. The first organized timed trials ran March 26, 1903, with Alexander Winton's "Bullet" beating Ransom E. Olds' "Pirate" by one-fifth of a second in a field that also included Oscar Hedstrom's Indian motorcycle. Flagler built the Ormond Garage in 1904 -- described by multiple sources as the first "gasoline alley" before Indianapolis -- to house the competing cars; it burned down in 1976. Regular attendees of the winter racing scene and the Hotel Ormond's social calendar included Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller. Organized beach racing moved to Indianapolis by 1911, but the sand-racing tradition Ormond and neighboring Daytona Beach established directly seeded what Bill France later built into NASCAR. The Hotel Ormond itself did not survive: the city ordered it evacuated as hazardous in 1986, and it was demolished on May 26, 1992. Its rooftop cupola was saved and now sits in Fortunato Park at the Granada Bridge, across from the site, which is now the Ormond Heritage Condominium.

John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s connection to Ormond Beach is its own, separate, well-documented story. The Casements, a Riverside Drive home built in 1913 by Reverend Dr. Harwood Huntington, was purchased by the retired Standard Oil founder in 1918 as a winter residence -- locals called him "Neighbor John." He golfed, watched the beach races he had once funded indirectly through his oil fortune's broader influence on the era, hosted Christmas parties attended by Ford, Firestone, and Edison, and died there in his sleep on May 23, 1937. The family sold the estate in 1939; it became a junior college in 1940, was sold again in 1959, and faced demolition in the late 1960s before local citizens intervened to save it. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, purchased by the City of Ormond Beach in 1974, restored with a federal Economic Development Administration grant, and reopened in 1979 as a cultural center the city still owns and operates today. That same corridor -- the Ormond Scenic Loop and Trail, a 34-mile double-loop National Scenic Byway threading past The Casements, three Florida state parks (North Peninsula, Bulow Creek, and Tomoka), and more than 300 years of documented history -- is a real, currently drivable and bikeable asset unique to this city among Volusia County's beach towns.

Ormond Beach runs its own commission-manager government, distinct from Daytona Beach's and from unincorporated Volusia County generally: a mayor elected at large plus four commissioners elected by zone, all nonpartisan, two-year terms, appointing a professional city manager to run day-to-day operations. That structure produced a real, contested budget fight in 2025: the city's tentative FY2025-26 millage rate opened at 4.5220 mills in July, was cut to 4.4797 at an August workshop, and the commission unanimously adopted a final rate of 4.3202 mills in September -- still 10.66% above the state-calculated "rolled-back" rate of 3.9042 mills, meaning the city collected meaningfully more property tax revenue even after the public pushback. Layered on top, Volusia County's own FY2025-26 countywide levy totals 5.5892 mills across its General Fund, Law Enforcement Fund, Volusia Forever Fund, and County Library Fund -- and that combined city-plus-county figure still excludes the Volusia County School Board's own millage, historically the single largest line on a Florida property tax bill, which this page does not state a current figure for. Ownwell's effective-rate analysis separately puts Ormond Beach's own median effective property tax rate at about 0.91% of assessed value, slightly below the Volusia County median of 0.96% and the Florida state median of 1.10% -- though effective rates vary by ZIP code within the city from roughly $2,798 (inland 32174) to $3,922 (coastal 32176) on comparable assessed values, reflecting different school and special-district levies.

A handful of facts genuinely could not be pinned down at a level this page is willing to state as settled, and it names them as gaps rather than inventing numbers. Not confirmed: a current, parcel-specific combined tax bill for any individual address; a current Ormond-Beach-specific homeowners or wind insurance premium, as opposed to statewide Citizens Property Insurance figures; the exact current drivable mileage of Ormond Beach's own beach-driving stretch (the city has only two county-administered vehicle access ramps, at Milsap Road and Harvard Drive, a noticeably smaller footprint than Daytona Beach's more extensive drivable strip to the south, but this page does not state a precise current mile count); and specific middle- and high-school zoning for a given address beyond the city's strong-performing elementary schools. Confirm current numbers directly with the Volusia County Property Appraiser, the City of Ormond Beach, a Florida-licensed insurance agent, and Volusia County Schools before making a purchase or relocation decision.