Lake Magdalene is a census-designated place (CDP) in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Tampa Bay area. The population was 30,742 at the 2020 census.
As a rural community northwest of Tampa, this area of Hillsborough County had welcomed enough residents to receive its first post office in 1888, followed by a scattering of schools and churches—most notably the United Brethren Church (now Lake Magdalene United Methodist), started in 1895 by Reverend Isaac W. Bearss, whose family line still maintains several acres of citrus groves in the region, butted up against the busy east-west, North Tampa corridor that bears the family name. The rustic qualities of Lake Magdalene remained until the 1990s when residential construction in Tampa pushed northward. By 1990 almost 16,000 people lived in Lake Magdalene, and according to the 2000 census, its population had nearly doubled to 28,755.
Lake Magdalene is surrounded by, and takes its name from, a 206-acre (0.83 km2) freshwater lake. The lake's name may come from the moniker of a Native American woman, Magdalena, who interpreted the language for a Spanish expedition into Florida in 1549, or the name may have resulted from the 1882 marriage in the community of John Parrish and Mary Magdalene Yates, daughter of Jonah Yates, first mayor of Plant City.
