The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park had two railway stations, and the museum is the Seaboard one

Between 1925 and the early 1980s Avon Park had two competing railways running through it, each with its own station, about half a mile apart.

The Atlantic Coast Line depot stood on Michigan Avenue at Church Street, in block 55, next to Coast Line section-house property. The November 1920 Sanborn fire insurance sheets show it there, a standard combined freight and passenger building.[sanborn-1920] It served the town from 1912. It was torn down in 1970 to clear the parcel alongside the demolished Maxcy packing house for the First National Bank motor bank and parking lot.[maxwell-1976] (Later architectural surveys casually reported the demolition as occurring in “the early 1980s”[nrhp-90000486]).

The Seaboard Air Line station stands on Museum Avenue, about a hundred yards north of Main Street, on its original site. It was built in 1925 for the Seaboard’s new Coleman-to-West Palm Beach line, and it is the building the Avon Park Historical Society occupies as the Depot Museum.[nrhp-90000486]

The confusion. RICHES of Central Florida, the University of Central Florida’s digital archive, carries a catalogue record for a photograph of the “Avon Park Atlantic Coast Line Train Station” whose description says the Coast Line depot “closed in 1978. The City of Avon Park purchased it, and the Historical Society leased and converted it into a museum in 1981.”[riches-acl-item] That is the Seaboard building’s story, attached to the Coast Line’s. RICHES’s own exhibit page on the same site keeps the two apart correctly.[riches-depots]

How to state it. The Coast Line came first, in 1912, and its station is gone. The Seaboard came second, in 1925, and its station is the museum. Any photograph captioned as the Coast Line depot should be checked against the Michigan Avenue location before it is used.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Avon Park Historic District (1990)
  2. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, Highlands County, Florida, November 1920 (1920)
  3. RICHES of Central Florida, University of Central Florida, Avon Park Atlantic Coast Line Train Station (2026)
  4. RICHES of Central Florida, University of Central Florida, Railroad Depots of Avon Park, in Central Florida Railroad Depots (2026)
  5. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book

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