The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886The Archive
Primary-source books, town prospectuses, pamphlets, and official records preserved in full scans. These publications preserve what settlers and town promoters were writing and reading in the years surrounding Avon Park's first plat.
Avon Park went bankrupt, and the plan by which it tried to compose its debts went to the Supreme Court of the United States, which threw it out because the city's fiscal agent had secretly bought up a third of the bonds and voted them for its own plan.
Six decisions of the Supreme Court of Florida, read in full from the Caselaw Access Project — a bond issue struck down in 1928, a recall election forced on the city council in 1933, and the long quo warranto in which landowners fought to get their rural acres out of a city that had annexed thirty-six square miles.
Almost no Avon Park newspaper survives from the town's first fifteen years, but Savannah, New York, Connecticut and Minnesota papers carried its news, and between them they preserve the town's first election, the sale of the town at a sheriff's auction, and the only description of an issue of its own newspaper.
The definitive newspaper of record for post-World War II Avon Park; 924 digitized issues spanning January 1948 to October 1979 document three decades of municipal government, civil rights, civic institutions, and Ridge agriculture.
Avon Park's primary weekly chronicle of the Great Depression and pre-WWII eras; 626 digitized issues spanning May 1928 to April 1942 document the Seaboard Air Line Railway depot, bank failures, municipal debt crisis, and New Deal programs.
Kenneth W. Porter's 1967 Florida Historical Quarterly article on Billy Bowlegs, previously hosted as a series of page scans on Spessard Stone's RootsWeb site.
The act of 8 June 1925 that abolished the Town of Avon Park, created the City of Avon Park, and enlarged its limits from two and a quarter square miles to a whole thirty-six-section township.
The act of 6 June 1927 that abolished and re-created the City of Avon Park for the second time in two years, and whose section 24 the Florida Supreme Court cut down in 1951 to stop the city council throwing out the votes of the town's Black precinct.
Special act authorizing the Board of County Commissioners of Highlands County to accept approximately 1,600 acres of Hooker Hammock as a public park and levy maintenance taxes.
The special act of 23 May 1913 that incorporated Avon Park, fixed its two-and-a-quarter-square-mile boundary, and named its first mayor, aldermen and officers.
The special act of 19 May 1915 that expanded Avon Park's borrowing and bonding authority, created a process for laying sidewalks, permitted local tax assessments independent of county valuations, and retrospectively validated the town's first two years of taxes and ordinances.
The general act of 23 April 1921 dividing DeSoto County into five, making Sebring the temporary county seat, ordering a permanent county-seat election by February 1923, and requiring the new counties to transcribe DeSoto County's records.
Complete transcription and bibliographic record of Paul L. Rumpsa's 1930 promotional booklet and price list, Citrus Par Excellence, printed by Drew Press of Jacksonville, documenting boutique citrus growing, packaging, and direct express distribution in Avon Park, Florida.
Machine transcription of O. M. Crosby's 1888 pamphlet on Lake Forest and Avon Park, the earliest publication found that names the town in print.
O. M. Crosby's 26-page promotional pamphlet on Lake Forest and Avon Park, scanned complete from the Florida State Library copy.
The founder's own promotional pamphlet, digitized and readable, which dates the settlement to early 1886, explains why he chose this site, and shows Lake Forest and Avon Park as a plat and a township rather than two rival names.
Machine transcription of Oliver Marvin Crosby's 1887 book on Florida, with all forty-nine engraved plates, published a year before he began selling lots at Avon Park.
Oliver Marvin Crosby's 1887 book on Florida for northern settlers, the fuller statement behind the 1888 Avon Park pamphlet.
The six statewide gazetteers and business directories that between them take a census of Avon Park's businesses in 1895, 1907, 1911, 1918 and 1924, the years in which no Avon Park newspaper survives.
The Florida Supreme Court decision of 20 November 1951 that stopped the Avon Park city council from throwing out every ballot cast in the town's Black voting place, transcribed in full from the reporter text.
The contemporary national magazine account of J. C. Burleigh's Shay locomotive and the Avon Park wooden railway, with an illustration by G. W. Breck.
Weekly newspaper published in Avon Park following the 1921 division of DeSoto County; 54 digitized issues spanning August 1921 to May 1923 document the founding era of Highlands County.
A 1939 federal transcript detailing the 1921 legislative creation, political organization, and early civic infrastructure of Highlands County, compiled by the WPA Historical Records Survey.
Chapter 19691 of 1939 moved Avon Park's city election from the first Tuesday in December to the second Tuesday in September and its fiscal year to October; Chapter 57-1128 of 1957 made the elections annual with staggered two-year terms — which is why the disputed election of 1951 was held on 11 September.
The monthly newspaper published at Pabor Lake in Avon Park by W. E. Pabor, digitized in full by the University of Florida - the best surviving contemporary source for 1890s Avon Park.
Four sheets showing Avon Park's streets, blocks and buildings in November 1920 - the earliest detailed map of the town, free and readable at the Library of Congress.
A digitized county newspaper carrying a weekly Avon Park page in 1905-06 and scattered Avon Park notices in 1915-16, with a total gap between 1907 and 1914 that hides the arrival of the railway and the town's incorporation.
Barbara Berry Darsey's 220-page Avon Park Guide, compiled for the Federal Writers' Project under the sponsorship of the Avon Park Chamber of Commerce, never published, and held at the University of Florida.
A verbatim extract from Avon Park's nineteenth-century newspaper, reprinted in a Minnesota weekly — the bank opening in temporary quarters in the Hotel Verona, its first depositor James R. Skuse, and the cashier's carriage journey from Fort Meade following an October hurricane.
Avon Park's weekly of the freeze years and after, of which no copy survives; what it printed is known only from the papers that quoted it, and about two dozen of its passages have been recovered that way.
The state's own county-by-county account of its schools, which names Avon Park's buildings, bonds, principals and pupil numbers from 1904 to 1936 and separates white from Black provision throughout.
T. Frederick Davis's authoritative 1938 account of the Disston land purchase, published in the Florida Historical Quarterly, which serves as the foundational text for assessing early Avon Park land titles.
Master research text and transcribed archive of Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell's foundational 1976 history of Avon Park, published by the Historical Society of the Old Settlers Association.
The DeLand weekly that carried Avon Park news, Avon Park growers' own words, the town's monthly weather returns and Crosby's advertisements for a decade - the fullest run of Avon Park material surviving anywhere in digitized form.
Oliver M. Crosby's promotional monthly for Avon Park, of which no copy is catalogued in any library; what it printed survives in a Federal Writers' Project writer's transcriptions of an 1895 issue lent to her by the town's first settler.
The state's own register of every company chartered in Florida, printed biennially with each charter's number, place of business, capital stock and dates - the record that dates Avon Park's mills and mill companies exactly.
Avon Park's primary boom-era weekly newspaper, founded by George W. Adams in November 1919; 231 digitized issues spanning 1919 to 1925 are preserved in the Society's collection.
The fullest architectural and documentary account of Avon Park's Main Street ever written — the Mall's construction year by year, the sixteen contributing resources with their dates and builders, and a history of the town from 1886 to 1990, with the errors it contains marked.
Every newspaper known to have been published at Avon Park, from Crosby's promotional sheet of the 1890s to the Avon Park Sun's closure in 1988 — three of them lost, and five preserved in over 2,100 digitized issues in the Historical Society's archive.
Regional weekly newspaper and periodical chronicling Highlands County tourism, citrus industrialization, and mid-century civic growth; 278 digitized issues spanning June 1938 to April 1974 are held in the Society's collection.
The only contemporary newspaper account of the 1951 Avon Park election affair yet recovered — a Tallahassee wire story on the Supreme Court's supersedeas and a staff report from Avon Park on the contempt hearing, naming the councilmen, their votes, and the four grounds argued for voiding the Black precinct.
The Federal Writers' Project's Florida — A Guide to the Southernmost State on Avon Park, transcribed from pages 60, 498, and 499, detailing early settlement, agriculture, municipal landmarks, and the Florida Homeseeker editorial.
The foundational patent granted to Joseph A. Gregor of Avon Park, Florida, and assigned to General Mills, Inc., establishing the two-step par-baking process known as Brown 'n Serve.
Contains nursery order notes for Eucalypt Lodge, Avon Park, FL (Ordered: Victor Roselle seeds, 1916).
Six photographs of Avon Park and a long interview with a Connecticut winter resident, published a year after the railway arrived — the first known photograph of the Avon Park depot, ox teams hauling oranges eighty miles, two packing houses, a bank with marble counters, and a five-hundred-acre park in the town.
Complete transcription and bibliographic documentation of the Works Progress Administration Historical Records Survey typescript, A Brief Sketch of the Creation and History of Highlands County, detailing the 1921 County Division Committee, initial county appointments, precinct creation, and early development.