Communication Builds Our Community
Communication Builds Our Community
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Among stories making the front page of the Highlander 100 years ago was a report on the progress of the new State Road 8 which was planned to run to Palm Beach through Okeechobee. The "Conners Highway" is named after the man who was advancing $200,000 towards the project, which was hoped would eventually include a bridge over the Kissimmee River, replacing the ferry that was in temporary use. The road was expected to be in "passable" condition by later that...
Controversies including the sudden cancellation of a road bond election by the county commission and a charge that someone illegally added a letter to a bill of deed highlighted local news in early February, 1924. The Lake Wales Highlander faithfully reported on those issues and others affecting the fast-growing community of Lake Wales. Meanwhile, the Lake Wales Woman's Club was conducting their second "Plant a Palm Day" tag sale to help beautify the city....
The concern of local residents in 1924 was the widening of Scenic Highway, not to four lanes, bu to four rods, enough to allow two motor vehicles to safely pass each other.The project to widen that road, then SR No. 8, required the right-of-way to be at least 66 feet wide the entire way, Since part of the ROW was only 60 feet wide, a local committee was set up to see about obtaining the necessary land to widen the road, which was considered essential for the growth of...
A housing boom in Lake Wales is not an unprecedented thing, as 100 years ago the young city was experiencing the same thing as 78 new homes were built in 1923, without filling the demand. During the early 1920s Florida was in the midst of the Great Florida Land Boom, a speculative bubble that eventually collapsed but left Lake Wales and a hundred other towns with an enormous inventory of new buildings, including the unique collection of masonry structures that dominate the...
The big news from 100 years ago included the sale of the historic first box of fruit from the Orphan Grove for $1,000, which was enough to purchase some homes in the city at the time. Other news stories told of an exploratory "oil well" being bored near Polk City. The area is now well-known to be the deepest region of the Floridan Aquifer, which is the source of the area's drinking water. Also in the news was word of yet another expansion to the growing network of paved roads...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago offered stories about the very active Lake Wales Woman's Club's hiring of a landscaper to beautify railroad park surrounding the passenger depot at Park Avenue. The group also cooked 800 chickens to feed a touring group of railroad men dinner in an effort to promote better railroad service for the growing town of about 2,000 residents. In other news the town was organizing a band with assistance from the director of the existing band...
Lake Wales voters were facing three election sin a 60-day span 100 years ago, with the first of the separate ballots to decide the burning issue of whether to require the fencing of livestock, thereby ending the "open range" era of life in this part of the state. The decades-long battle between advocates of open range livestock and those who opposed the practice had sometimes led to violence due to incidents including fence-cutting. Those clashes were referred to as "range...
The big issue before the voters in the Lake Wales area in 1923 was whether Polk County should opt in to the new state policy of requiring that farm animals be fenced in. Prior to that time in most of Florida, residents fenced their yards and gardens to keep unwanted animals, especially cattle, out. The issue became more serious with the popularity of the automobile after hundreds were killed in crashes involving cattle wandering onto highways. Trains were equipped with "cow ca...
The extension of a local rail line to reach the east coast of Florida was all the talk of Lake Wales residents in November 100 years ago. Many were undoubtedly hoping that the line would be the spur that already extended to Nalaca on the Kissimmee River. That line, which served logging, cattle, and mining interests, passed through Hesperides and Sumica before ending along the river. Today a portion of that former line is the Lake Wales Trailway on the north side of Lake Wailes...
In 1923, 100 years ago this week, the Highlander was celebrating the "paving" of three-foot wide rock shoulders on Scenic Highway from Haines City to Frostproof. That primary road, which extends south to Sebring, will be made even more valuable when the new bridge over the Kissimmee River is completed on the Conners Highway, linking the east and west coasts of the state. Officials from Tampa to West Palm were celebrating the impending completion of the new road. Elsewhere,...
1 years ago the young Highlander newspaper celebrated the area with a 24-page special edition of "Who's Who and What's What" in the Lake Wales area. The edition was packed with facts about the growing community. The Lake Wales area already boasted some 20,000 acres of citrus plantings by 1923, according to the front page of The Highlander's "Who's Who and What's What" special edition. The annual Florida citrus crop was estimated to have reached 20 million boxes of fruit,...
Only 100 years ago the young town of Lake Wales was kept up-to-date by stories shared on the pages of The Highlander. This week the buzz was about a pair of men who had made the drive all the way from Indiana in only five days, covering a distance of 1,214 miles on "fair" roads, "with the exception of over the mountains," where no doubt things remained rather sketchy for automobile traffic, since most locals there preferred mules at the the time. In other local news, local res...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community, including overcrowded schools and the divisive debate over free-range versus fences. A referendum would soon decide whether to end free-range cattle that often wandered onto roads. The build-out of the 1919 school building was underway, but The Highlander pointed out that some 100 minority students still had no facility. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of t...
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community, including incipient battles over lake levels, and the potential for the further growth of Mountain Lake and the development of Edward Bok's garden sanctuary plans for the top of Iron Mountain. Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in...
Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century age. The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library. The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became The Daily Highlander under several different names, and was published six times a week as a Sunday morning paper, and afternoons Monday through Friday until 1995.The original...
Starting this week the Lake Wales News will begin publishing historic reproductions of the Lake Wales Highlander newspapers from 100 years ago. The images, retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library, will portray the front page of each week's newspaper. The Lake Wales Highlander was a weekly publication that tracked the growth and progress of the fledgling community, which had only recently exceeded a population of 500. At that time it was poised for...
