Polk County’s population increased by 93 percent between 1900 and 1910. Winter Haven’s population more than tripled from 429 to 1436 residents. Still, 1400 is a relatively small number for the adventures the village pursued between 1910 and 1920. Here are the bold initiatives that marked the decade …
BOARD OF TRADE
Along about 1910, in fact before Winter Haven formally incorporated, local businesses banded together to form a Board of Trade. Forerunner to the Chamber of Commerce, it existed until 1923 when it transitioned to the Chamber.
The group published one of the earliest promotional pieces for the community. We estimate it was published in 1913. It begins, “Winter Haven is the center of the world’s richest citrus-fruit section, and likewise the center of the famous lake region of Polk County. Unlike many cities of southern Florida, Winter Haven is not a mere winter resort — it is a substantial town, with an energetic year-round population …”
“Both in winter and summer Winter Haven has ideal climatic conditions. In winter the temperature is mild and free from extremes. In summer, Winter Haven feels none of the discomforts of the so-called semitropical sun … the rainy season checks undue warmth, and the nights are delightfully cool.” (Remember, this was before air-conditioning!) “The air is always pure, the water is bright, clear, and refreshing, and mosquitos seldom are known.”
The brochure goes on to tout the local altitude (200 feet above sea level) as a great advantage, both climatic and natural. It noted that at that elevation, there were “no swamps, fevers, malaria or great humidity.” It also notes the lakes are all “the product of overflowing springs,” which we know today is not true. There can be some seepage from the aquifer, but none of the area lakes are “spring-fed.”
And lest the lazy become interested the text states, “Winter Haven does not seek, invite, or tolerate the shiftless or the idle. It is not the place for the person who expects to make a fortune without individual effort …”
The Board of Trade, while spirited and inclined toward hyperbole, had its ups and downs during the 1910-20 decade. It would transition to the Chamber of Commerce in 1923.
THE VILLAGE INCORPORATES
On June 22, 1911, the townspeople elected to officially incorporate the city. A town council was formed, and the town seal (a citrus tree) was adopted. While their numbers were modest, their plans were mighty!
NEWS CHIEF BEGINS PUBLICATION
M. M. “Dad” Lee was the founder of Winter Haven’s first newspaper of the twentieth century, The Florida Chief. Volume 1 Page 1 debuted On September 28, 1911, and featured a Native American Chief with a feathered headdress as a part of its “flag” or page design. (History tells of an earlier newspaper published for about one year in the late 1890s, but there are no known copies of The Lake Region Gazette.)
Lee had relocated to Winter Haven from Kansas where he had worked both as postmaster and newspaper publisher. His wife was hospitalized in Topeka when he arrived here in Winter Haven with his three daughters and two sons. They purchased a large home on Lake Silver adjacent to the home of J. Walker Pope (a real estate developer and father of the man who would eventually found Cypress Gardens, Richard “Dick” Pope).
In that first issue, Lee wrote directly, “To the People of Winter Haven: In presenting this first issue of the Florida Chief we have no apologies to offer, no promises to make. Winter Haven needs a newspaper, the people say so ... Our policy will be to build up and not tear down ... Come in and get acquainted.”
The newspaper grew with the community and then, during the height of the Florida real estate boom, Lee expanded the paper from a weekly to a daily on September 15, 1924. The paper was then published every afternoon but Sunday.
The Florida Chief continued to serve Winter Haven as the sole provider of news until 1930 when George Burr and his wife Josephine (author of The History of Winter Haven) founded the weekly Winter Haven Herald. The Florida Chief would later merge with a competitor to become the News Chief.
FIRST K - 12 SCHOOL
In 1915, the community finished construction on its first school, serving kindergarten through grade 12. The building was located on the present site of the downtown Post Office. Prior to its opening, the eighth grade was the highest grade of education attainable in Winter Haven. Due to rapid growth, Winter Haven would build a new High School in 1922 on the present site of Denison Middle School. That 1915 building would become Central Grammar for generations of students and later, briefly as Central Junior High.
THE “GRAND” CANAL
As early as 1912, M. M. “Dad” Lee, publisher of Winter Haven’s fledgling Florida Chief newspaper was editorializing in favor of creating a “grand canal” to connect area lakes.
By 1915, a small group of determined residents moved forward with a vision of connecting many of our lakes by canals. The group was organized as the Twenty Lakes Boat Club. The month the charter was signed, the club had a Savannah engineer plat a proposed course for boats to traverse the south, west, and northern perimeters of Winter Haven and beyond from Lake Winterset to Lake Hamilton.
The fledgling citrus industry had made a healthy comeback from the freezes of the mid-1890s. Roads of the day were sand or clay and used to haul the crop. A team of mules would pull a wagon loaded with ten to fifteen field crates of fruit. The crates weighed from 900 to 1400 pounds and proved difficult to move. Some believe the canal concept may have been an idea the growers thought would provide a better means of transportation.
The lakes originally targeted included Winterset, Eloise, Lulu, Shipp, May, Howard, Cannon, Idylewild, Hartridge, Conine, Rochelle, Haines, Smart, Fannie, Buckeye and Hamilton. Of the original twenty lakes to be connected, all but Buckeye eventually became a part of what today is known as the upper and lower chains comprising a total of 25 lakes. These are separated by U.S. 17 between Hartridge and Conine where a lock now exists.
The self-funded private group had great determination, but by early 1917 they were bankrupt. The Twenty Lakes Boat Club did not accomplish the entire task before its demise. The ultimate failure of the effort is thought to have involved the group having created responsibilities larger than their budget could maintain.
No further progress was made on the canal system until May 20, 1919, when the Winter Haven Lake Region Boat Course District was established by an act of the Florida Legislature. Taxing power was granted by local referendum (78 for and 49 against) in a special election on July 7 of that same year.
By September 1919, an engineering company was authorized by the “Canal Commission” to dredge and clean canals. At the time there were no seawalls used in the system. As the system matured, wood and later asbestos panels would be used to secure the canal walls. Today, aluminum sheeting is the canal wall of choice.
Today’s system of canals and boat ramps on area lakes are maintained by the Lakes Region Lakes Management District created by citizen referendum more than 105 years ago.
Our “Chain of Lakes” is viewed by many citizens as our defining asset, all the more reason to be known as the “Chain of Lakes City.”
The decade from 1910 to 1920 is arguably the timeframe where the smallest number of our citizens created some of Winter Haven’s greatest destiny-defining moments.
Next Month: “The Roaring Twenties and the Florida Boom!”
