About the Depot Museum

The Depot Museum is the Avon Park Historical Society’s home: the old Seaboard Air Line passenger and freight station at 3 North Museum Avenue, a hundred yards north of Main Street, on the site where it was built. It is the only railway station left standing in the town.

The building

The Seaboard reached Avon Park in a hurry. In 1924 the railway chartered a subsidiary, the Florida Western and Northern Railroad, to build a new line straight down the middle of the peninsula from Coleman to West Palm Beach, within sight of the Atlantic Coast Line branch that had held the town’s trade since 1912. The last spike was driven on 21 January 1925, and four days later the Orange Blossom Special carried the Seaboard’s president and some five hundred guests over the new road, through Avon Park.

The station went up with the line. It is a one-storey masonry building in the Spanish Eclectic style the Seaboard used along the whole extension: hollow tile under rough stucco, a hip-roofed entrance block with a round-arched doorway and arched windows divided by spiral columns, and a long, flat-roofed freight wing. The trackside elevation repeats the arches under a flat awning on decorative brackets. The line’s depots were designed by the West Palm Beach firm of Harvey and Clarke. The National Register nomination, the one source that examined the building itself, dates it to 1925; it is often given as 1926.

The Palmland, Silver Meteor, Silver Star and Sunland all stopped here. Passenger service ended on 30 April 1971, when Amtrak took over the long-distance trains, and the building was given to the Old Settlers Association on 4 January 1979. The Society has occupied it since. The dining car beside it is a 1948 California Zephyr car, bought by the Society in 1986.

The full story, with its sources, is in the archive: the Seaboard Air Line station and the railroads and the making of Avon Park.

What is inside

Exhibits on the people, businesses and events that shaped Avon Park, from pioneer life to the citrus years, with artifacts, memorabilia and photographs. A collection of historic newspapers and archives that visitors can browse. The photograph collection, from downtown and the schools to families and celebrations. And the dining car, where lunch is served in a restored railroad car from the age when the train was how you got to Central Florida.

The Baseball Museum opened beside the Depot in May 2026, under a mural signed the previous November.

Visiting

Group tours and research visits are welcome outside posted hours by appointment; ask through the About Us page. Volunteers lead tours on the hour on open days when they can, and the events calendar lists the days they are sure to.