The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park Transportation Company

Formation and purpose

Formed in January 1895 with $25,000 in capital stock, to build a railroad from Avon Park, then in DeSoto County, north to Haines City in Polk County — about forty miles — where it would connect with the Plant System for Jacksonville and the North. John C. Burleigh was elected superintendent, and was credited with originating the construction method the company adopted.[harpers-1895-novelty]

The company had been trying for some time, without success, to persuade investors to extend a conventional steel railroad to Avon Park.[byrne-wooden-railroad] What changed its approach was Burleigh’s improvised overland move of a Shay locomotive on relaid timber in December 1894: the expedient turned out to be cheap enough to build a railroad from.

Right-of-way clearing began on Saturday, 12 January 1895, when over 200 men with axes and shovels cleared about three miles of pine and palmetto north of town and Mary Emma Crosby (“Mrs. O. M. Crosby”) drove the first spike.[savannah-1895-01-20] By late March 1895, Savannah’s Morning News reported that nearly five miles of roadbed were ready for the tracks and that the town intended to press construction forward until the line reached Haines City.[savannah-1895-03-29]

The novelty of the project generated widespread coverage across the United States. An early trade notice in the Manufacturers’ Record — reprinted in the New-York Tribune on 5 March 1895 under the headline “A Railroad of Wood” — described Burleigh’s nine-day overland haul from Bowling Green and the company’s plan to lay four-by-eight-inch timber rails fastened with eighteen-inch wooden pins, and the story was syndicated across at least two dozen out-of-state newspapers between March 1895 and April 1897, including Savannah’s Morning News in June 1895 and Washington, D.C.’s Morning Times in September 1895.[ny-tribune-1895-03-05][morning-news-1895][morning-times-1895]

A Novel Railway in South Florida

“A Novel Railway in South Florida,” drawn by G. W. Breck. Harper’s Weekly, 15 June 1895, page 567. Via Internet Archive. Public domain.[harpers-1895-novelty]

The wooden track

Rails were 4x8 timber beams laid directly in the sand without cross-ties. Rail ends were joined by wooden fish-plates, and rails and plates were held together by wooden pins eighteen inches long.[harpers-1895-novelty] The attraction was cost. A wooden line could be built for a small fraction of a steel one, which mattered a great deal to a town of a few hundred people that no trunk railroad wanted to serve.

The company was chartered as a common carrier aiming at a trunk-line connection, which distinguishes it from the many purely private mill tramways of the era. A published history of Florida railroads records the forty-mile wooden-tramway proposal, though that text has not been read directly and is cited here only as a lead.[turner-fl-railroads]

Outcome

The line never reached Haines City. Funding did not come, and steel rail arrived at Avon Park only in 1912, seventeen years after the company was formed — the Florida Railroad Commission’s station tables still end the Atlantic Coast Line’s Haines City branch at Frostproof in the year to February 1912 and carry it through Avon Park to Sebring in the year to February 1913. Popular accounts giving 1911 are a year out.[frc-15][frc-16]

The line did open to Pabor Lake, and the date is confirmed. The Pabor Lake Pineapple of September 1895 reported it on the front page under the headline “IT HAS COME. / The Tramway Reaches Pabor Lake, / On Its Way From Avon Park to Bartow / First Excursion Over the Line,” and opened: “The tramway reached Pabor Lake on Saturday, September 7, this being the first station from Avon Park on the way north… This the Avon Park Transportation company has undertaken to give us in a tramway line, wooden rails and steam engine, and a connection at (probably) Bartow with the great railway system of the country.”[pineapple]

Note the destination has changed. In June 1895 the target was Haines City; by September it was Bartow, and hedged with “probably.”[harpers-1895-novelty][pineapple] The company was still improvising its route three months from opening.

The same report names the men behind it: “the principal promoters of this enterprise — Messrs. Crosby, Knapp, Burleigh and Chollar,” with a President Knapp and O. M. Crosby, president of the Florida Development Company, both speaking.[pineapple] The claim that about 150 passengers rode the first train comes from a modern uncited account and was not confirmed in the newspaper report.[byrne-wooden-railroad]

A second name for the same January 1895 organization?

The Pabor Lake Pineapple reports that the Avon Park & Haines City Railroad was organized at Avon Park on 5 January 1895 with two-thirds of its capital stock subscribed, electing President Clark D. Knapp, Vice-President O. M. Crosby, and Secretary and Treasurer C. C. Chollar.[pineapple] Harper’s Weekly reports the Avon Park Transportation Company as formed in January 1895 with $25,000 capital and Burleigh as superintendent.[harpers-1895-novelty]

Same month, same town, overlapping people. These are either two names for one venture or two related companies, and the record does not yet say which. What the Pineapple does settle is the identity of the two men previously known only as surnames in the September 1895 report: Knapp is Clark D. Knapp and Chollar is C. C. Chollar.

An earlier and far more ambitious scheme lies behind both. The Frost-Proof Line was incorporated at Avon Park in November 1892, capitalized at $50,000 with authority to increase to a million, and projected from Haines City south through Crooked Lake, Midland, Pabor Lake and Avon Park, then on via Fort Myers to a Gulf port, with branches to Bartow and Arcadia.[pineapple] Four miles of wooden tramway is what came of it.

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. Harper's Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 2008, A Novelty Among Railroads (1895)
  2. Jason Byrne, Florida History Blog, The Marvelous Wooden Railroad (2024)
  3. Railroad Commission of the State of Florida, Fifteenth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of the State of Florida, for the year ending 29 February 1912 (1912)
  4. Railroad Commission of the State of Florida, Sixteenth Annual Report of the Railroad Commission of the State of Florida, for the year ending 28 February 1913 (1913)
  5. Gregg M. Turner (Arcadia Publishing, 2003), A Short History of Florida Railroads (2003)
  6. W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor, Pabor Lake Pineapple, vol. 3 no. 10, September 1895, p. 145 (1895)
  7. The morning news, The morning news (Savannah, Ga.), 24 June 1895 (1895)
  8. The morning times, The morning times (Washington, D.C.), 8 September 1895 (1895)
  9. The Morning News (Savannah), The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), 20 January 1895, p. 16: 'Avon Park people are building a tram railroad to Haines City' (1895)
  10. The Morning News (Savannah), The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), 29 March 1895, p. 6: 'Nearly five miles are ready for the tracks already' (1895)
  11. New-York Tribune (reprinting Manufacturers' Record), New-York Tribune, 5 March 1895, p. 6: 'A Railroad of Wood' (1895)

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