Phosphate and Extractive Industries in the Avon Park Region
Phosphate Mining Absence in Highlands County
Despite the prominence of the phosphate industry in Central Florida during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Avon Park and Highlands County were not centers of industrial phosphate mining.
Historical operations and massive strip-mining infrastructure (such as draglines and steam shovels) were heavily concentrated in the “Bone Valley” region—a geological formation primarily encompassing Polk, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Hardee counties to the north and west of Avon Park. Early operations also occurred in North Florida (Alachua and Hamilton counties) starting in the 1880s.
Highlands County appears occasionally in broad early geographical surveys, such as the 1893 map of the “Phosphate Fields of Florida,” because geological formations that yield phosphate are widespread across the Florida peninsula. However, these local deposits were not economically viable for large-scale, modern strip mining, and no industrial phosphate company towns or major excavation pits were established in the immediate Avon Park vicinity.
Local Extractive Industries: Logging and Naval Stores
Rather than phosphate, Avon Park’s foundational extractive economy relied on the region’s vast longleaf pine forests through logging and turpentine (naval stores) operations.
Logging and Sawmills
In the 1890s, the timber industry was a primary commercial driver for early Avon Park. The most prominent operation was John C. Burleigh’s steam-powered sawmill on Lake Brentwood. To reduce the cost of hauling timber from the deep pine flatwoods by mule, Burleigh introduced lightweight Shay locomotives (including the Crosby) and constructed a specialized tramway (the “wooden railroad”). This transition to mechanized transport reduced timber hauling costs by an estimated 65 percent and established early infrastructural connections along the Lake Wales Ridge.
Turpentine and Naval Stores
As the naval stores industry migrated south into Florida by the 1870s, turpentine camps became ubiquitous in the central part of the state. Avon Park, developing during the height of this era, hosted operations such as the Hagan Naval Stores Company south of town. These operations utilized segregated labor camps and left lasting marks on the region, with early African American civic and educational institutions in Avon Park originally taking root within these turpentine labor quarters.
References
- Raw Harvest Data: Phosphate and other extractive industry in the region (Internal Database, 2026).
- Finding: Hagan’s Turpentine Still was the Hagan Naval Stores Company
- Report: John C. Burleigh, the Steam Engine, and the Avon Park Wooden Railroad
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