The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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The roads to Avon Park

The town was founded twenty-six years before a railway reached it and sold on the strength of a carriage drive. Its roads matter more to its history than most Florida towns’.

1888: signboards in the flatwoods

There was no road, only a route. Crosby’s pamphlet tells buyers to take a settler’s ticket to Fort Meade, then face “a drive of eighteen to twenty miles … for most of the way over a hard (not sandy) flat woods road.” They could drive it alone, because “sign-boards mark the way to Avon Park at every diverging road or path.”[crosby-1888]

The company put up the signposts. That was the transport infrastructure of Avon Park in 1888.

Crosby also notes that the open pine woods could be driven through without roads at all: “under which a carriage can be driven for miles in any direction, unfettered by roads, fences, or bounds.”[crosby-1888]

1906: a proposal to run motor cars to the railhead

The Avon Park column of May 1906 reports a proposition put to a meeting by a Mr. Hinkley: to run automobiles over the road between Wauchula and the Park to carry freight and passengers “between Avon Park and the Railroad, if the people would put the road in suitable condition.”[dsc-1906-05-18]

Motor freight to the railhead, proposed at Avon Park in 1906, six years before the rails arrived and conditional on the town fixing its own road.

1915: sixty feet wide, and cleared by the county

By March 1915 the county was doing the work:

“The county road force has cleared the track to the Park. A sixty-foot road to the town line and forty feet on to Zolfo is clear of trees and brush.”[dsc-1915-03-18]

A sixty-foot right of way is a serious road for 1915, and it points north-west toward Zolfo Springs and Wauchula — the same direction as the 1906 motor-car proposal.

1916–1917: sand asphalt and the Kennedy Construction Company

By late 1916, the town was laying hard-surface paving. Photographs from the State Archives of Florida document the W. P. Kennedy Construction Company laying sand asphalt pavement down Main Street in November 1916, and operating a Cummer road asphalt plant in Avon Park by May 1917.[florida-memory-rc04768][florida-memory-rc10657]

Looking down Main Street - Avon Park Looking down Main Street - Avon Park. Sand asphalt pavement laid by the W. P. Kennedy Construction Company in November 1916. (State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory) [florida-memory-rc04768]

Cummer road asphalt plant, Avon Park Cummer road asphalt plant, W. P. Kennedy Construction company - Avon Park, Florida, 8 May 1917. (State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory) [florida-memory-rc10657]

1920: the Dixie Highway is a street in town

The November 1920 Sanborn street index lists “Dixie Highway” among Avon Park’s named streets.[sanborn-1920] The Dixie Highway was the great promoted auto route from the Midwest into Florida, and by 1920 its line ran through the town.

1927: a state road worth borrowing $50,000 to beautify

Chapter 12839 of 1927 authorized Highlands County to issue up to $50,000 of Highway Beautification Bonds for “the beautification and ornamentation of State Highway No. 8” as it ran through Avon Park, Sebring, DeSoto City, Lake Placid, Lake Annie and Brighton to the Kissimmee River, and named a five-member Highway Beautification Board with C. E. Lanier of Avon Park on it.[lof-1927-12839]

So by 1927 the through route was State Road 8, running the length of the county with Avon Park at its northern end — and it was thought worth ornamenting at public expense.

1939: two designations through the town

The 1939 legislature designated two state roads through Avon Park on the same day:[lof-1939-roads]

  • State Road 8-A — “from State Road 2 at Leesburg via Haines City, Avon Park, Moore Haven to Clewiston,” approved by the Governor on 5 June 1939. The act expressly does not abolish State Road 8, and allows the State Road Department to lay 8-A “coincident or parallel to any part of State Road 8.”
  • State Road 5-S.E. — from State Road 15 at Crystal River, via Inverness, Floral City, Istachatta, Croom, Trilby, Dade City, Richland, Kathleen, Lakeland, Bartow, Fort Meade, Avon Park, Sebring, Bassinger, Okeechobee and Indian Town to West Palm Beach.

Two things stand out. The Haines City to Avon Park axis of 8-A is the road equivalent of the Atlantic Coast Line branch of 1912 — the same corridor, thirty years later. And 5-S.E. runs through Fort Meade to Avon Park, which is the 1888 wagon road, still the way in half a century after Crosby’s signboards.

The Leesburg-Haines City-Avon Park-Clewiston line is substantially the route now numbered U.S. 27, which today forms Avon Park’s western city limit.

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. O. M. Crosby, Common Sense About Florida: Lake Forest and Avon Park (1888)
  2. O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 May 1906, page 8: Avon Park department (1906)
  3. The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 18 March 1915, page 6: Avon Park notes (1915)
  4. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, Highlands County, Florida, November 1920 (1920)
  5. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapter 12839 (No. 1034), Laws of Florida 1927: Highlands County Highway Beautification Bonds (1927)
  6. Legislature of the State of Florida, Chapters 19230 and 19252, Laws of Florida 1939: designation of State Roads 5-S.E. and 8-A (1939)
  7. Unknown, Looking down Main Street - Avon Park, Florida (1916)
  8. Unknown, Cummer road asphalt plant, W. P. Kennedy Construction company - Avon Park, Florida (1917)

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