Pabor Lake Colony

A colony settlement four miles north of Avon Park, founded by the colonization promoter William E. Pabor and now gone. It matters to Avon Park’s history out of all proportion to its size, because it produced the newspaper that records the period.

Pabor Lake Pineapple, Vol. 1 No. 1, October 1892. University of Florida Digital Collections, bib. no. AA00020306. Public domain.[pineapple]

Founding

The settlement’s own founding date, celebrated annually afterwards as Founder’s Day, was 18 July 1892, corroborated in the paper’s own issues of August 1893 and July 1895.[pineapple] Pabor’s October 1892 account says he secured about 1,400 acres in “the last half of Avon Park township” for a home, a town and a colony; a reprint from the Manufacturers’ Record in September 1894 instead says 2,000 acres.[pineapple] Pabor himself, writing in The Florida Agriculturist five years after he arrived, gives a third figure: “about one thousand acres of land bordered by half a dozen lakes.”[fa-1897-10-06] The discrepancy is unresolved, and the smallest figure is the one the founder gave last.

The townsite proper was laid out on ground the settlers had known as “Camp,” with forty acres divided into town lots and the rest of a 160-acre tract cut into two-and-a-half-acre plots.[pineapple]

The promoter

W. E. Pabor was an experienced colonizer before Florida. A reprinted Denver newspaper profile called him “a natural colonizer,” noting he had been one of the early secretaries of the Union Colony at Greeley and had helped organize colonies at Fort Collins, Corona and Colorado Springs.[pineapple] Pabor Lake was a late venture in a long career of selling settlement.

Institutions

A post office operated at Pabor Lake from 1893 to 1900. The Post Office Department’s register of appointments records W. E. Pabor as its first postmaster from 2 March 1893, Bellona Havens from 4 April 1898, and its discontinuance on 30 July 1900 with the papers sent to Avon Park; Pabor’s own location paper of February 1893 counted twenty-two inhabitants in a “village just started” (see The Pabor Lake Post Office).[nara-m841-desoto][forte-postal] The Pabor Lake Pineapple entered the mails as second-class matter there on 25 July 1893.[pineapple] There was no hotel; visitors were directed four miles to Hotel Verona at Avon Park.[pineapple]

The tramway

Pabor Lake was the first station out of Avon Park on the wooden-railed tramway of the Avon Park Transportation Company, reached on Saturday 7 September 1895 — an event the Pineapple reported on its front page under the headline “IT HAS COME.”[pineapple] Its editor spoke at the celebration.

The colony in 1895

The state business directory of 1895 gives Pabor Lake its own entry, and it is the only outside inventory of the colony that has been found. Population fifty; a post office and an express office; reached “via Bowling Green or Fort Meade on S F & W R R,” 225 miles from Jacksonville; and “250 acres pineapples now growing.”[gaz-1895]

Five entries follow:

• M. B. Goodell, carpenter
• E. A. Pabor, notary
• W. E. Pabor, manager of the Pabor Lake Colony and postmaster
• W. H. Pabor, carpenter
• Welcome Inn, Mrs. W. E. Pabor, proprietor

Three Pabors and a hotel kept by Pabor’s wife: the colony was, in its trading life, a family business. E. A. Pabor — Edgar, co-editor of the Pabor Lake Pineapple — was still at Pabor Lake in 1895 and holding a notary’s commission. W. H. Pabor, a carpenter, has not appeared in any other source. The Welcome Inn is the only hotel ever recorded at Pabor Lake.

The two hundred and fifty acres of pineapples are the measure of the colony at its height. Pabor’s own paper was named for the crop, and this is the one independent figure for how much of it was in the ground.

What became of it: a grove-care business, 1909-1910

The colony did not simply disappear when its post office closed in 1900. It became a business. The Florida Agriculturist of 1 December 1909 carries a display advertisement:

Orange and Pomelo Groves and Winter Homes in Lake Region of South Florida. Orange, Grapefruit Groves and Pineapple Plantations Set Out and Cared for in the Interest of Non-Residents or Winter Tourist Owners. Full particulars given on application. Address W. E. Pabor & Sons, Pabor Lake, Avon Park, Florida.[fa-1909-12-01]

A further advertisement for “Pabor Lake Fruit Lands, Avon Park, Fla.” runs into 1910, and Pabor was still being written to at Avon Park in February 1907.

Seventeen years after founding the colony, the Pabors were selling grove care to absentee northern owners rather than land to settlers — which is what the district had actually become after the freeze. The firm’s name, “& Sons,” also settles that Pabor’s sons, Edgar among them, were still with him. It was running two years before Pabor’s death at Denver in August 1911.

End

The colony did not last. The post office closed around 1900, and the newspaper’s digitized run stops in September 1897.[forte-postal][pineapple] The place name survives as a lake north of Avon Park.[wiki-pabor-lake] The freezes of the mid-1890s, which cut Avon Park’s population from nearly 500 to 128, are the obvious cause, but no source consulted here documents the colony’s actual end.

What became of Pabor

He went back to Colorado. W. E. Pabor died suddenly of apoplexy at Denver on 29 August 1911 and was buried at Fruita, the Colorado town he had founded and named; the Ocala paper still called him “Mr. W. E. Pabor of Avon Park.” He left a wife, four sons and a daughter.[ocala-1911-09-04] See the entity on Pabor himself.

The colony advertised, October 1892

Pabor advertised the colony in The Woman’s Tribune of Beatrice, Nebraska — a suffrage paper — over the heading “FLORIDA: Pabor Lake Colony. PINEAPPLE LANDS SURROUNDED BY SEVEN LAKES. Lakes Vigo, Pabor, Trout, Pansy, Damon, Pythias and Nemo. THERE IS MAGIC IN THE NUMBER SEVEN. The Town Site of Pabor Lake Located in the Center of this System of Lakes — Prices and Terms for Choice Tropical Fruit Lands.”[womans-tribune-1892-10-15]

The seven lakes are named, which no other source in this bundle does: Vigo, Pabor, Trout, Pansy, Damon, Pythias and Nemo.[womans-tribune-1892-10-15] Modern cartography identifies all seven: Pabor Lake straddling the county line, Trout Lake (site of Camp Wingmann), Lake Damon, Lake Pythias, Lake Nemo (now Lake Lillian), Lake Vigo (now Lake Adelaide), and Pansy Lake (Lake Pansy, named for Pabor’s daughter). See Finding: The Seven Lakes of the Pabor Lake Colony.

And Pabor gives his own reason for coming, in the first person:

In April of this year the writer visited Florida with a view to securing a tract of land for colony purposes as well as to select a home for himself and family in the most healthy part of the State. For several years nervous troubles had made serious inroads upon his health, and twenty-two years’ residence in Colorado, light air and sudden climatic changes, had made it necessary to seek a lower and warmer altitude. Hence the visit to Florida.

Gulf and sea coast, while presenting certain advantages, seemed undesirable because of liability to frost, to malaria and mosquitoes. The lake region of South Florida, with its high pine ridges and its wonderful system of fresh-water lakes, seemed to present advantages not to be found elsewhere, and the east half of Avon Park township offered the opportunity. A tract of about 1,400 acres of land was secured.[womans-tribune-1892-10-15]

Three things follow. The 1,400-acre figure is Pabor’s own, printed in October 1892, which is the strongest evidence yet against the 2,000 acres of the 1894 reprint. He came in April 1892 and had the land by October. And the formula “frost, malaria and mosquitoes” — which the 1939 WPA guide attributes to Crosby with a fourth item added — was in fact the standard sales language of the ridge, used here by Pabor in his own advertisement, without the racial clause.

References

• fa-1897-10-06 — unsigned; almost certainly W. E. Pabor. Five Years in Florida, The Florida Agriculturist, 6 October 1897, page 1. 6 October 1897. florida-agriculturist.md
• fa-1909-12-01 — W. E. Pabor & Sons, in The Florida Agriculturist (Jacksonville, Fla.). The Florida Agriculturist, 1 December 1909, page 33: advertisement of W. E. Pabor & Sons, Pabor Lake, Avon Park. 1 December 1909. florida-agriculturist.md
• gaz-1895 — Belden Publishing Company. Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895, s.v. Pabor Lake. 1895. florida-business-directories.md
• pineapple — W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor. Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897. 15 September 1897. pabor-lake-pineapple.md
• nara-m841-desoto — United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives. Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for DeSoto County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), page 56, Pabor Lake entry. 30 July 1900. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78731856
• forte-postal — Jim Forte Postal History. Post Offices by county, Florida. 31 August 2026. https://www.postalhistory.com/postoffices.asp
• ocala-1911-09-04 — Ocala Evening Star. Ocala Evening Star, 4 September 1911, page 2: W. E. Pabor. 4 September 1911. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84027621/1911-09-04/ed-1/?sp=2
• womans-tribune-1892-10-15 — W. E. Pabor, in The Woman’s Tribune. Florida — Pabor Lake Colony: Pineapple Lands Surrounded by Seven Lakes, advertisement in The Woman’s Tribune (Beatrice, Neb.), 15 October 1892, page 3. 15 October 1892. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85038008/1892-10-15/ed-1/?sp=3
• wiki-pabor-lake — Wikipedia. Pabor Lake. 30 August 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabor_Lake

Related

• Pabor Lake Pineapple
• Finding: The Seven Lakes of the Pabor Lake Colony
• Avon Park Transportation Company
• Report: the naming of Avon Park and the question of the English settlers
• Entity: William E. Pabor
• Report: Avon Park in the state business directories, 1895-1925
• Report: Avon Park in The Florida Agriculturist, 1890-1910
• Finding: Pabor’s own account of the freezes

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. unsigned; almost certainly W. E. Pabor, Five Years in Florida, The Florida Agriculturist, 6 October 1897, page 1 (1897)
2. W. E. Pabor & Sons, in The Florida Agriculturist (Jacksonville, Fla.), The Florida Agriculturist, 1 December 1909, page 33: advertisement of W. E. Pabor & Sons, Pabor Lake, Avon Park (1909)
3. Belden Publishing Company, Florida Railroad Gazetteer and State Business Directory, 1895, s.v. Pabor Lake (1895)
4. W. E. Pabor and E. A. Pabor, Pabor Lake Pineapple, October 1892 to September 1897 (1897)
5. United States Post Office Department, Records of the Post Office Department (Record Group 28), National Archives, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832–1971, Postmaster Appointments for DeSoto County, Florida (Microfilm Publication M841), page 56, Pabor Lake entry (1900) · official
6. Jim Forte Postal History, Post Offices by county, Florida (2026)
7. Ocala Evening Star, Ocala Evening Star, 4 September 1911, page 2: W. E. Pabor (1911)
8. W. E. Pabor, in The Woman's Tribune, Florida — Pabor Lake Colony: Pineapple Lands Surrounded by Seven Lakes, advertisement in The Woman's Tribune (Beatrice, Neb.), 15 October 1892, page 3 (1892)
9. Wikipedia, Pabor Lake (2026)

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