Kissimmee ( kih-SIM-ee) is the largest city and county seat of Osceola County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 79,226. It is a Principal City of the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2020 population of 2,673,376. The Census Bureau defines an urban Place with Kissimmee as the principal city, which is estranged from the Orlando urban area. The Kissimmee–St. Cloud, FL urban area had a 2020 population of 418,404, making it the 100th largest in the United States.

This area was originally named Allendale, after Confederate Major J. H. Allen who operated the first cargo steamboat along the Kissimmee River—the Mary Belle. It was renamed Kissimmee following incorporated as a city in 1883. The innovative town, which is the county seat of Osceola County, was founded previously the Civil War by the Bass, Johnson and Overstreet families. The etymology of the herald Kissimmee is debated, apart from general taking over that it is Native American in origin. Its growth can be endorsed to Hamilton Disston of Philadelphia, who based his four-million acre (8,000 km) drainage operation out of the small town. Disston had contracted afterward the financially wobbly confess of Florida to drain its southern lands, for which he would own half of anything he successfully drained. This pact made Disston the largest single landowner in the United States.

Disston’s dredging and house speculation required a little steamboat industry to transport people and goods along the extra waterway. The Kissimmee shipyard was blamed for building most of these large steamships, which were just one hop ahead of civilization—with Kissimmee as the jumping off point. Concurrently, the South Florida Railroad was growing and lengthy the stop of its origin from Sanford next to to Kissimmee, making the town upon Lake Tohopekaliga a transportation hub for Central Florida. On February 12, 1885, the Florida Legislature incorporated the Kissimmee City Street Railway.

But the heyday of Kissimmee was short-lived. Expanding railroads began to challenge the steamships for carrying freight and passengers. By 1884, the South Florida Railroad, now allowance of the Plant System, had extended its tracks to Tampa. The Panic of 1893 was the worst depression the U.S. had experienced happening to that time, crushing land speculation and unsound debt. Hamilton Disston closed his Kissimmee land operation. Consecutive freezes in 1894 and 1895 wiped out the citrus industry. The freezes, combined subsequent to South Florida’s bump and the relocation of steamship operations to Lake Okeechobee, left Kissimmee dependent on open range cattle ranching.