In 1906 Avon Park considered steam automobile transit to Wauchula to solve its railhead isolation

On Saturday, 12 May 1906, the Avon Park Horticultural Society convened at Arthur Winthrop Sargent’s Sargent’s Hall to address the town’s most pressing economic obstacle: the lack of a railroad connection to transport citrus fruit, farm produce, and passengers.[dsc-1906-05-18][maxwell-1976]

With the nearest active railheads situated twenty miles westward at Wauchula (on the Atlantic Coast Line’s Lakeland-to-Fort Myers line) and forty miles northward at Haines City, local growers and civic leaders debated two formal commercial proposals to establish mechanized highway transportation across the undeveloped flatwoods.[dsc-1906-05-18]

The Competing Motor Transit Proposals

Presided over by Society President Erving Leander Richardson, the meeting evaluated two independent offers from commercial promoters:[dsc-1906-05-18]

1. W. H. Salmon of Elkton: E. L. Richardson presented correspondence from W. H. Salmon proposing to operate a fleet of motor vehicles along the wagon route between Wauchula and Avon Park to carry scheduled freight and passenger traffic.[dsc-1906-05-18]
2. Major Davidson (“Maj. Davidson”): Ben Hinkley, an English immigrant who had arrived in Avon Park in 1903 as resident caretaker of the Davidson family’s Hollyhurst estate on Lake Lotela, presented a proposition from Major Davidson (printed in the first sentence of the newspaper report as “Mayor Davidson” through a typesetter’s error, and corrected six lines below in the same paragraph to “Maj. Davidson”) offering to establish automobile transport connecting Avon Park to the railroad, conditioned on the local community improving its end of the road and bridges.[dsc-1906-05-18][maxwell-1976] The Hollyhurst estate belonged to Colonel Harlan Page Davidson of Northwestern Military Academy in Highland Park, Illinois, and his son Major (later Colonel) Royal Page Davidson, a pioneer designer of steam and gasoline military motor vehicles who had wintered at Lake Lotela since December 1892.[maxwell-1976]

Roadway Infrastructure and Steam Traction

The Horticultural Society’s discussion centered on the physical realities of traversing unpaved central Florida flatwoods. Until the early 1910s, transit between Avon Park and neighboring settlements relied on unimproved sandy trails where heavy wagons routinely bogged down.[crosby-1888]

The assembly examined the road and wooden bridge improvements required on the Avon Park end of the route before commercial vehicles could run. After technical debate on the limitations of early internal combustion engines in deep sand, the attendees reached a consensus that heavy steam-powered automobiles alone possessed the continuous low-end torque necessary to negotiate the unpaved terrain.[dsc-1906-05-18]

Civic Action

By formal resolution, the Horticultural Society instructed Mr. Hinkley to reply to Major Davidson stating that the citizens of Avon Park were favorably inclined toward the enterprise, while requesting detailed engineering specifications, including the weight of the machines, operational schedules, and the projected date of deployment.[dsc-1906-05-18]

Although the subsequent arrival of the Atlantic Coast Line in 1912 ultimately superseded the need for long-distance motor freight lines, the 1906 initiative directly stimulated local road grading, leading within a decade to the sixty-foot cleared county highway linking Avon Park westward toward Zolfo Springs and Wauchula.

References

• dsc-1906-05-18 — O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla. The De Soto County News, 18 May 1906, page 8: Department of The South Florida Sun, Horticultural Meeting. 18 May 1906. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn95026908/1906-05-18/ed-1/?sp=8
• crosby-1888 — O. M. Crosby. Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park. 1888. https://archive.org/details/commonsenseabout00cros
• maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida. 1976. ../documents/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md

Related

• Entity: The roads to Avon Park
• Entity: Royal Page Davidson
• Finding: a railroad survey was working south from Haines City toward Avon Park in 1906
• Finding: early teachers and principals of Avon Park, 1904–1935
• Report: the railroads and the making of modern Avon Park

Where this comes from

Evidence

corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.

Review

unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.

Rights

society

Sources

1. O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 May 1906, page 8: Department of The South Florida Sun, Horticultural Meeting (1906)
2. O. M. Crosby, Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park (1888)
3. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (../documents/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book

Something here wrong, or incomplete? The Society would rather know. Tell a volunteer.

Have a question about this record?Ask A.P.

← Back to collection