The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
Menu
Admin Sign-In

This is a draft. It is published so it can be read and corrected, not because it is finished.

The Fort Kissimmee community was condemned and removed in 1942 for the bombing range

The 107,059 acres the Army took in March 1942 are usually described as scrub, marsh and cattle range.[mfh-airfield] They were also somebody’s home.

What was there

A settlement had grown up around the army post of Fort Kissimmee, built in January 1850 and abandoned in 1858. After the Seminole Wars the Kissimmee River valley filled with cattle-raising families from Georgia and South Carolina, and the civilian Fort Kissimmee outlasted the fort by more than eighty years.[floridamemory-321149]

Lewis Henry Thomas gave the land for the settlement’s first church, school and cemetery. He ran a barge ferry across the river, bought land between 1885 and 1890, and kept cattle, hogs and a citrus packing house. He married Spicey Ann Underhill in 1890; they had nine children. Children were ferried to the Fort Kissimmee school from the surrounding ranches and from Kicco, a sawmill settlement in Polk County. There were few roads; the river and the steamboats did the work of one.[legends-ftk] A monument erected by descendant families in 1994 records that the community ultimately had three successive schools. The first schoolhouse stood near the river, east of the cemetery. Later, a Missionary Baptist Church about seventy-five yards west of the cemetery doubled as the second school, and finally a third school operated southwest of the cemetery until the 1942 military acquisition.[genealogytrails-ftk]

The cemetery dates from about 1890. Its first burials were John Sheffield and Henry Shaw, two cattlemen who killed each other in a duel in 1892 after Sheffield reported Shaw for stealing a hog. According to local tradition, their coffins were built from lumber intended for the Fort Kissimmee schoolhouse, and they lie side by side under an oak.[wiki-ftk-cemetery][legends-ftk][rootsweb-okeechobee-cemeteries]

What happened

“Just before World War II began in 1942, the settlers were paid a settlement to move from the Kissimmee River Valley area by the US government before turning the cattle grazing land into a bombing range.”[wiki-ftk-cemetery]

The land was condemned — taken by compulsory process via a “Judgment on Declaration of Taking” under the 1942 Declaration of Taking Act, with compensation — and the residents required to leave.[legends-ftk] Families moved south along the river valley to Fort Basinger, Lorida and Okeechobee. Nothing of the settlement itself remains.

What survives

The cemetery, and only because someone fought for it. Louis Alsmeyer persuaded Air Force officials to spare it from demolition, fence it, and let families in once a year. The government deeded about 4.25 acres. The Fort Kissimmee Cemetery Association, made up of descendants of the pioneer families, still meets over Memorial Day weekend to clean the ground and hold a gathering.[wiki-ftk-cemetery]

The cemetery, counted

The Fort Kissimmee Cemetery is Find a Grave cemetery 72000, with 110 memorials: the Boney family about twenty-nine of them, the Thomas family thirteen, Rhymes ten, McClelland seven, Tomlinson and Guy five each, and single stones for Sheffield and Shaw — the two men of the duel of about 1890 that tradition makes the first burials. Lewis Henry Thomas (1864-1935), who gave the land for the settlement’s church, school and cemetery and ran the barge ferry, lies there with his wife Spicey Ann Underhill Thomas (1873-1946) and five of their children, one of them PFC James H. Thomas of the 507th Parachute Infantry, killed 12 January 1945; so do Cornelius M. “Dock” Boney (1850-1910) and Joseph McClelland (1860-1926), pioneer settlers.[findagrave-ftk] A 1976 compilation of the valley’s pioneer families names the settlement’s founders as Dock Boney, Joseph McClelland, Lewis Thomas, Finley Collier, the Huckabys, the Rhymes and the Tomlinsons, and bounds Kissimmee Island — the range land — by Lake Kissimmee, the river, Lake Istokpoga, and Lake Arbuckle and Arbuckle Creek.[pioneer-families-1976] The same surnames recur among the later settlers of Lorida, which is where many went in 1942.

Two documents would carry this much further. Doris M. Lewis, The Kissimmee Island “Piney Wood Rooters”, a family-based history sold by the Frostproof Historical Museum, is the evident source behind every online account of the cemetery and has not been read. And the 1994 National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form for the range’s archaeological and historical resources names Fort Kissimmee, the Keen Homestead and the Keen Dip Vat among its sites; like Park T. DeVane’s 1983 unpublished history of the range’s lands, the likeliest fullest account of who owned and lived on this land before 1942, it sits on tDAR behind a block, and both should be requested from the range’s cultural resources office.[tdar-mpdf-1994][devane-1983]

Every source used here is secondary, and none cites a deed, a condemnation docket, or a newspaper. The names, the dates and the sequence are consistent between them but are not independently established.

The removal was lawful and compensated, and it was also the end of a community that had been there for three generations. The people who were moved are the same cattle families who appear elsewhere in this county’s history, and their descendants are still nearby.

Oral histories and descendant preservation

Official state reports note that further research, specifically the collection of oral histories, is needed to develop a better understanding of the area’s cultural history and the 1942 displacement.[loc-fort-kissimmee-search] No specific oral history collection focused on Fort Kissimmee has yet been located at the Library of Congress or state archives. The Fort Kissimmee Cemetery Association, which continues to meet annually on Memorial Day weekend, remains the primary active body of descendants and the most direct avenue for gathering these accounts.

References

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. Wikipedia, Fort Kissimmee Cemetery (2026)
  2. Legends of America, Fort Kissimmee, Florida - Ghost Town & Military Post (2026)
  3. Museum of Florida History, Avon Park Army Airfield, in Florida in World War II historical sites (2026)
  4. Find a Grave contributors, Find a Grave: Fort Kissimmee Cemetery, cemetery id 72000, 110 memorials (2026)
  5. Kissimmee River valley pioneer families compilation, Pioneer Families of the Kissimmee River Valley (1976 compilation), as hosted on lamartin.com (1976)
  6. R. J. Austin and L. Weant, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form for the Archaeological and Historical Resources of the Avon Park Air Force Range (1994), tDAR 391361 (1994)
  7. Park T. DeVane (unpublished report to Avon Park Air Force Range, 1983), A History of the Lands Composing the Avon Park Bombing Range (1983)
  8. Genealogy Trails, Fort Kissimmee Cemetery monument transcription (2026)
  9. FloridaGenWeb, Okeechobee County Cemeteries: Ft. Kissimmee Cemetery (2026)
  10. State Library and Archives of Florida, Origin and Development of Polk County (2026)
  11. Library of Congress, Search for "Fort Kissimmee" "oral history" (2026)

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

Have a question about this record?

← Back to collection

Ask A.P.

Ask the archive

    Try asking:

    0 / 500

    A.P. answers only from the Society's own archive and cites what it used. Questions are not linked to you; search history is stored on your device only (how it works).Ask a volunteer for anything it cannot answer.