The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park ran its own municipal bus line to the bombing range

In the middle of the war the City of Avon Park was operating a bus service — not a franchise granted to a private company, but a system the city owned and ran itself — and it ran out of town to the headquarters of the Avon Park bombing range.

The evidence is an act of the Florida Legislature that became law without the Governor’s approval and was filed with the Secretary of State on 14 June 1943:

AN ACT Validating and Approving the Establishment and Operation By the City of Avon Park in Highlands County, Florida, of Its Municipal Bus System in Said City and Its Adjacent Suburban Territory, Including the Operation of Said Municipal Bus System Between Said City and the Bombing Range Headquarters, Located in Polk County, Florida, and a Few Miles to the Northeast of Said City, and Authorizing and Regulating the Operation of Said Municipal Bus System in the Future.[lof-1943-22211]

What the act says

Section 1 validates and approves what the city had already done. Section 2 authorizes it “to continue as long as it may deem advisable.” Section 3 puts the system “under the general supervision and control of the City Council,” lets the council delegate its powers to the Mayor or to a committee, and lets it “employ a manager of such municipal bus system at such salary as may be fixed by resolution,” that manager being dismissible like any other city officer. Section 4 lets the council make ordinances about the buses in the ordinary way.[lof-1943-22211]

What it tells us

The city had started the service before it had the power to. The whole point of a validating act is that something has been done which somebody doubts the authority for. Avon Park set up a municipal bus system, ran it, and then went to Tallahassee for permission after the fact. The act does not say when the service began; it must have been at some point between the range’s establishment in 1941 and the spring of 1943.

It was a war-work service. A small Florida city does not run a bus line into the next county for pleasure. The route existed because Avon Park people were working at the range, and in wartime, with gasoline and tires rationed and cars scarce, getting them there was a municipal problem. This is the first documentary evidence of how the range’s workforce actually reached it.

It fixes the location of the range headquarters. The act places the Bombing Range Headquarters “in Polk County, Florida, and a few miles to the northeast” of Avon Park — not in Highlands County, and not on the town’s own edge.[lof-1943-22211]

The bus system was a city department. With a manager on a council-fixed salary, dismissible by the council, and ordinances of its own, this was municipal enterprise of the same kind as the water works and the light plant that the 1927 charter contemplated. It belongs in the account of what the City of Avon Park owned and ran.

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. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 22211 (No. 577), Laws of Florida 1943 (House Bill No. 862): An Act Validating and Approving the Establishment and Operation By the City of Avon Park in Highlands County, Florida, of Its Municipal Bus System (1943)

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