The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Seminole War Military Roads and Modern Highlands County Highway Alignments

Summary

Modern arterial highways crossing Highlands County—including US 27, US 98, State Road 60, State Road 64, and State Road 70—do not follow Seminole War-era military wagon roads.[ives-1856-memoir][laws-fl-1923-c9311] Federal military road engineering in South-Central Florida was concentrated entirely north of the modern county boundary during the 1849–1850 cordon fortification, while military reconnaissance across modern Highlands County followed unimproved natural ridges and Indian footpaths without wagon road construction.[ives-1856-memoir][ives-1856-map] The modern highway network originated exclusively in twentieth-century Good Roads bond issues, private toll turnpikes, and state legislative highway designations enacted between 1914 and 1925.[ridge-scenic-hwy-2016][nps-nrhp-sebring-1989]

The 1849–1850 Trans-Peninsular Military Corridor

During the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), federal military operations in the central peninsula were tactical and seasonal; no constructed overland road linked Tampa Bay with the Atlantic coast.[ives-1856-memoir] When the Indian River outpost of Fort Pierce was established in January 1838, it was supplied entirely by coastal shipping from St. Augustine, and it was abandoned in 1843 without any westward overland wagon connection to Fort Brooke.[ives-1856-memoir]

A formal cross-peninsular military wagon route was established only in late 1849 and early 1850 under the direction of Brigadier General David E. Twiggs, following attacks at Indian River and the Peace River trading store at Paynes Creek.[ives-1856-memoir] To isolate the Seminoles south of an established frontier line, troops and Florida militia cleared an east-west wagon corridor connecting a chain of newly erected cordon posts:

  • Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay,
  • Fort Meade on Peas Creek (Peace River),
  • Fort Clinch on Lake Clinch (modern Frostproof),
  • Fort Arbuckle near Lake Arbuckle,
  • Fort Kissimmee on the Kissimmee River,
  • Fort Drum on the Kissimmee Prairie,
  • Fort Vinton, and
  • Fort Capron on the Indian River, established in March 1850 opposite Indian River Inlet, four miles north of the ruined Fort Pierce site.[ives-1856-memoir][ives-1856-map]

This entire fortified corridor was laid out along Township 31 South, crossing the Kissimmee River at Range 31 East.[ives-1856-map] Lieutenant George G. Meade surveyed the route under orders from General Twiggs, while Lieutenant Ambrose Powell Hill directed artillery pioneer detachments clearing timber and laying pine and palmetto log causeways between Fort Meade, Fort Clinch, and Fort Arbuckle.[brown-1991-meade] Modern Highlands County’s northern statutory boundary sits twelve miles farther south at Township 33 South; the military supply line therefore passed entirely through southern Polk County.[ives-1856-map]

The only substantial civil engineering associated with General Twiggs’ central peninsula operations was the crossing of the Kissimmee River at Fort Kissimmee.[ives-1856-memoir] Lieutenant J. C. Ives recorded in his 1856 official Memoir that General Twiggs’ command constructed a timber and earth causeway across approximately 900 yards of soft marsh opposite Fort Kissimmee to permit wagon crossing.[ives-1856-memoir] No comparable military causeways, bridges, or graded roads were constructed south of that line in modern Highlands County.[ives-1856-memoir][austin-1987-apafr]

Military Transit in Modern Highlands County

The official military surveys compiled in April 1856 by Lieutenant J. C. Ives under the direction of Captain A. A. Humphreys of the U.S. Topographical Engineers show exactly one military transit route entering the territory of modern Highlands County.[ives-1856-memoir][ives-1856-map] This was an unimproved north-south scout trail connecting Fort Meade with Fort Thompson on the Caloosahatchee River, utilized by army columns to patrol the western margin of the Lake Wales Ridge and the Kissimmee basin.[ives-1856-memoir]

Lieutenant Ives described the path in his Memoir:

“ROUTES FROM FORT THOMPSON TO FORT MEADE… Continuing for twenty miles over prairie, sand hills, and pine country, the trail leads to a marsh of considerable extent, in which the South Prong of the Big Charley Popka takes its rise. The course from there is north-easterly, for seven miles, to Lake Istokpoga… After leaving the lake, the road runs in a northwest direction for a few miles till it enters the marshy grounds between the Middle and South Prongs of the Big Charley Popka… entering these sand hills, the route passes over a high black jack ridge, a mile or two west of a string of small lakes that connect the waters of LochLapopka and Istokpoga… as far as the Fort Meade and Kissimmee road.”[ives-1856-memoir]

This trail was a blazed sand path through pine flatwoods and scrub oak rather than an engineered highway.[ives-1856-memoir] It followed the natural contour of the ridge west of Lake Jackson and Lake Istokpoga, avoiding the interior wetlands.[ives-1856-memoir][ives-1856-map]

Intensive archaeological reconnaissance across 106,210 acres of the Avon Park Air Force Range in eastern Highlands and Polk counties verified the absence of any constructed nineteenth-century military road in the Florida Master Site File.[austin-1987-apafr] While the site of Fort Kissimmee (8HG15) was relocated on the Kissimmee River, historical transportation resources recorded on the reservation consist exclusively of twentieth-century turpentine tram grades, early civilian settlement wagon roads, and the World War II government military railroad grade (8HG1064).[austin-1987-apafr]

Folklore references to an east-west “Twiggs Trail” across Highlands County find no support in the archaeological or official documentary record.[austin-1987-apafr][ives-1856-memoir] The phrase does not appear in nineteenth-century federal military correspondence, official maps, or the statewide historical marker survey of Seminole War sites.[ives-1856-memoir][fl-dos-heritage-trail-2015] Its modern local circulation stems primarily from mid-twentieth-century military target naming on the Avon Park Air Force Range, where an aerial gunnery range target was named for an alleged Third Seminole War supply track.[news-sun-2025-nalaka]

Twentieth-Century Origins of Modern Arterials

Modern Highlands County highways were engineered during the Good Roads movement and the Florida land boom to serve citrus packing houses, railroad depots, and growing automobile tourism:[ridge-scenic-hwy-2016][nps-nrhp-sebring-1989]

  • US 27 (Main Street Avon Park / State Road 17 and State Road 25 bypass): Traces directly to the Ridge Scenic Highway, funded by a June 1914 Polk County $1,500,000 road bond issue that constructed a nine-foot-wide asphalt roadway from Haines City through Lake Wales to Frostproof by May 1918.[ridge-scenic-hwy-2016] In Chapter 9311 of June 8, 1923, the Florida Legislature designated the corridor as State Road 8 (“Extending from Haines City to Fort Pierce via Lake Wales, Frostproof, Avon Park, Sebring, Lake Annie and Okeechobee City”) and mandated that it be completed before contracts for secondary roads could be awarded.[laws-fl-1923-c9311] Continuous asphalt paving from Jacksonville through Avon Park to Sebring was completed in November 1924 for the National Governors’ Conference at Kenilworth Lodge.[nps-nrhp-sebring-1989] US 27 was extended from Tallahassee to Miami in June 1948, routing along the original downtown street alignment (modern SR 17) until the four-lane State Road 25 bypass west of Avon Park and Sebring was completed in May 1956.[ridge-scenic-hwy-2016]
  • US 98 (State Road 700 / former State Road 59): Follows the alignment of the private Conners Highway, built by W. J. Conners between West Palm Beach and Okeechobee in 1924, whose connecting leg between Sebring and Okeechobee was paved in 1925.[laws-fl-1925-c10269] In Chapter 10269 of June 1925, the legislature designated this alignment as State Road 59, running “from Zolfo Springs via Crewsville, DeSoto City, north side Lake Istakpoga, thence the most acceptable route to a point on State Road No. 8 at or near west end of the Kissimmee River Bridge.”[laws-fl-1925-c10269] US 98 was extended across the peninsula in 1951, running concurrently with US 27 through Avon Park and Sebring before turning east across the prairie.[laws-fl-1925-c10269]
  • State Road 60: Originates in State Road 30, established under Chapter 9311 of 1923 (“from Frostproof to Vero, via Lokosee and Fort Drum”), and State Road 79, established in 1933 from Tampa through Bartow and Lake Wales to the Kissimmee River.[laws-fl-1923-c9311] The crossing at the Kissimmee River was established as a timber-frame bridge in the 1920s and consolidated as State Road 60 during the 1945 statewide highway renumbering, running entirely north of the Highlands County line.[laws-fl-1923-c9311]
  • State Road 64 (Main Street in Avon Park): Descends from a sixty-foot-wide cleared county right-of-way opened in 1915 between Avon Park and Zolfo Springs, designated by the legislature as State Road 32 in 1923 (“From Bradentown to Avon Park by way Parrish, Fort Green and Wauchula”) and renumbered State Road 64 in 1945.[laws-fl-1923-c9311]
  • State Road 70: Created in 1945 by combining pre-1945 State Road 18 (designated in 1923 from Sarasota to Lake Annie via Arcadia) with the eastern segment of State Road 8 (Lake Annie east through Brighton and Okeechobee to Fort Pierce).[laws-fl-1923-c9311]
  • Fort Kissimmee Road: County Road 64 east of Avon Park and the sand roads leading into the bombing range descend from early twentieth-century civilian settler wagon tracks that connected Avon Park to the rural river settlement at Fort Kissimmee before federal condemnation in 1942.[austin-1987-apafr]

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. Lieut. J. C. Ives and Capt. A. A. Humphreys, U.S. War Department, Memoir to Accompany a Military Map of the Peninsula of Florida, South of Tampa Bay (1856) · official
  2. Lieut. J. C. Ives, U.S. War Department, Military Map of the Peninsula of Florida South of Tampa Bay (1856) · official
  3. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 9311, Laws of Florida (Acts of 1923): An Act Designating a System of State Roads of the State of Florida (1923) · official
  4. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 10269, Laws of Florida (Acts of 1925): An Act to Amend Section 1 of Chapter 9311, Laws of Florida, Acts of 1923 (1925) · official
  5. Robert J. Austin, University of South Florida Department of Anthropology, An Archaeological Survey of the Avon Park Air Force Range: Cultural Resource Management Study No. 1 (1987) · archival
  6. Ridge Scenic Highway Corridor Management Entity, State Road 17 Story: The Good Roads Movement and Construction of the Scenic Highway (2016) · secondary
  7. National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Multiple Resource Area of Sebring, Florida (1989) · official
  8. Canter Brown Jr., Tampa Bay History 13, no. 2, George Meade, John Pemberton, and A. P. Hill: Army Relationships during the Florida Crisis of 1849-1850 (1991) · secondary
  9. Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Seminole Wars Heritage Trail (2015) · official
  10. Highlands News-Sun, Archeologists seek anecdotes about Nalaka (2025) · newspaper

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