Polk County Historical Association

10/09/2026

10/08/2026

Lake Wales Public Library Renovations Ribbon Cutting Ceremony 10/5/2026.
Thank you to everyone who in one way or another made this possible! ❤😍
Click on the link for video!
https://youtu.be/0NnMlqJP7Pc?si=HpEf10uvxtONzHEO

10/06/2026

09/30/2026

I was driving past the Latt Maxcy Corporation recently and found myself remembering when I first met Pat and Patricia Wilson. Pat carried a

09/28/2026

That black racer cutting across your Florida lawn means your yard is holding the insects, lizards, and cover a healthy ecosystem runs on. It's a predator that keeps rodents and pests in check, and it wants nothing to do with you - the shovel is the only real hazard here.

09/23/2026

09/17/2026

Join us next Thursday (9/24) at 5:30 pm for the next installment in the Lakeland History and Culture Center Lecture Series -- Grown in Florida: A Reexamination of the History of the Farmworkers' Movement with Dr. Charlie Fanning. 🍊

Often overlooked by historians, Florida’s farmworkers forwarded important and innovative challenges to the oppressive labor, social, and legal systems that kept them in poverty. In this lecture, Dr. Charlie Fanning will show how farmworkers’ organizing in Florida reshaped both working conditions in the state’s agricultural complex and national movements for economic and social justice.

Dr. Charlie Fanning is an Assistant Professor of History and the Assistant Director of the Lawton M. Chiles Center for Florida History at Florida Southern College, specializing in labor, immigration, and environmental history.

This lecture will be held in the main Lakeland Library meeting room, and no registration is required.

09/17/2026

Uniquely Polk!

Polk County, Florida, is known as an international water-skiing destination, but did you know it was once home to a very different kind of skiing?

Just south of Fort Meade stood Sand Mountain, a massive man-made mountain created by Swift & Company in the late 1940s from sand washed from phosphate rock during processing. Rising roughly 200 feet above the surrounding landscape, it became one of Polk County’s most unusual landmarks — and a popular destination for weekend recreation.

Families made the trip to climb the mountain, picnic at the top, and slide back down on sleds, cardboard, or anything else that would work. In 1951, Cypress Gardens founder Dick Pope Sr. saw the potential for something truly different: sand skiing!

Water skiers from Cypress Gardens experimented on the sandy slopes, and Pope brought in champion snow skiers to try their skills on Sand Mountain. The novelty soon attracted competitors and spectators alike.

In the mid-1960s, new technology made it possible to recover valuable phosphate from Sand Mountain, and the site was eventually leveled to reclaim the remaining material. Though the mountain is no longer standing, it certainly hasn’t been lost to the sands of time. Its story remains a fascinating chapter in Polk County history.

09/17/2026

This 1915 plat map shows the Highland Subdivision in Lake Alfred, the earliest document for the Highland community we’ve discovered that shows the street names, almost entirely from the citrus world.

This map is more than a layout of lots and lines. It’s a snapshot of Lake Alfred’s identity in its earliest years, when the citrus industry left its imprint on nearly everything, even the street signs.