Fort Meade is the oldest city in Polk County, dating its origins to 1849 when it was an old military road from Tampa (Fort Brooks) to Fort Pierce during the Indian wars. The 1880s business district was located on old Wire Street (now Broadway), which was a casualty to 4 devastating fires.

The earliest known burial is John I. Hooker (1821-1862) located in the Evergreen Cemetery in town. Fort Meade's Christ Church (Episcopal) located at 526 N. Oak was built in 1889. It is a frame vernacular with Gothic Revival elements and was designed by architect J. H. Weddell. A minister by the name of C.E Butler had committed suicide at the church in 1894. Located next to Christ Church is the famous Rev. Wm James Reid House. Located within the historic district, the house was used for the HBO motion picture The Judgement featuring Blythe Danner, Keith Carradine and Jack Warden (1990).

Future Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, was stationed at the fort in 1851. The town was burned by Union forces in 1864 and all of the original structures were destroyed, except the 2nd fort which was dismantled in the 1890s. Fort Meade has over 300 hundred homes on the National Register of Historic Places ,and a handful that date to the late 1800s.

Polk City was incorporated in 1925 and, like the county, is named after James Knox Polk, the eleventh president of the United States.olk City is governed by a five-person council who elect a mayor and vice mayor from their membership.

Haines City was platted in 1885, shortly after the South Florida Railroad reached the area[4]. The city was first known as Clay Cut, but there was no railroad station. It is said that the inhabitants persuaded the railroad company to build a station by agreeing to rename their city Haines City, to honor a senior railroad official, Colonel Henry Haines.The early settlers planted citrus groves, and citrus growing and processing became the main industry of the city.

Frostproof

The name Frostproof was a marketing ploy to convince potential landowners that the town has never had, and never would have, a frost that could destroy the large citrus-driven economy. However, only a couple of years later, a terrible frost killed most of the citrus in Frostproof. Prior to being named Frostproof, the town was named Keystone City. However, after being confused regularly with Keystone Heights, a city in North Florida, Frostproof was coined.

Lakeland was first settled in the 1870s and began to develop as the rail lines reached the area in 1884. It was incorporated 1 January 1885. The town was founded by Abraham Munn (a resident of Louisville, Kentucky), who purchased 80 acres of land in what is now downtown Lakeland in 1882 and platted the land for the town in 1884. Among the names considered (and rejected) for the town by its residents were Munnville, Red Bug and Rome City.

Lake Alfred

The city was established soon after the South Florida Railroad reached the area in 1883[4]. It had a number of early names, including Fargo, Chubb and Bartow Junction. The name Lake Alfred was adopted in 1913, and was taken from the nearest large lake, named for Alfred Parslow, who came to Florida in 1877 and obtained a charter to build the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad.

History of Bartow

The early 19th Century, very few people lived in Florida, especially the area south of Gainesville. Heat and humidity, dangerous wildlife, and uncharted swampland made a comfortable life in southern Florida an uncertainty. A bigger threat to any would-be settlers was the Seminoles, a Native American tribe native to Florida. While a few of the Seminole had left for Oklahoma, some decided to stay in Florida and make life rough for any new settlers who tried to make a living. After the Second Seminole War ended in 1842, southern Florida seemed ripe for settlement. Still, many felt uneasy about the continued Seminole presence in the Everglades and stories were always told about hostile encounters "not far away". So most of the early settlements in peninsular Florida were set up as forts, to discourage any Seminole attacks - just in case. In 1850, the first permanent new settlers came to the area near the headwaters of the Peas River or Peace River and established Fort Blount. This settlement was somewhat stalled by the American Civil War a decade later, although the Polk County government was established in 1861. After the war, in 1867, the county commissioners decided the county seat should be named after General Francis Bartow, the first Confederate officer to die in the war, and so, the name of Fort Blount was changed to Bartow. A few years later, thanks to land donations from Jacob Summerlin, the Polk County government was firmly established in Bartow.

The city of Lake Wales

The land around the present city was surveyed in 1879 by Sidney Irving Wailes, who changed the name of a lake, then known as Watts Lake, to Lake Wales. The city of Lake Wales was established near the lake in 1911-12, planned by the Lake Wales Land Company. The spelling Wales was used for the city, although the lake is still generally spelt Lake Wailes.In 1925 the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad built a new line from Haines City joining lines to Everglades City. A depot was opened on this line at Lake Wales.located in central Florida, west of Lake Kissimmee and east of Tampa. The Shrine of Ste Anne des Lacs was nearby. Among the attractions in Lake Wales are Bok Tower Gardens, Chalet Suzanne, and Spook Hill, an optical illusion which makes a car in neutral appear as if it is traveling uphill (gravity hill). A commercial historic district in the heart of the old town contains important examples of architecture from the period of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. .

Found in Wikipedia

Contributed by Norita Moss