About

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The City of Frostproof is a tiny town tucked between Clinch Lake and Lake Reedy in the south east corner of Polk County, in the central portion of Florida. This area is known as part of the “ridge,” a series of long, slow rolling hills of various types of sand, limestone, lakes and creeks. Natural history for the area shows the center of Florida was once a long sand bar that grew into rolling sand dunes and over millions of years became the Florida we know today. Evidence of white beach sand can still be seen in what are called “scrub islands,” patches of land, undisturbed by development, that have plant and animal life found no where else on Earth.

The east side of Frostproof is sheltered by 26,000 acres of the Lake Wales Ridge State Forest. To the north and east of the city is The Nature Conservancy’s Tiger Creek Preserve, another 4,805 acres of protected lands. Longleaf pine forest, scrub oak islands, oak hammocks with stands of cypress and lob-lolly bays in the wetter areas, with tannin water creeks and lakes make up most of this preserved land. For more information, click here: The Nature Conservancy, Lake Wales Ridge Program and Lake Wales Ridge State Forest.

One main road runs through the center of town, U.S. Highway 17, also called Scenic Highway. To the north is Babson Park, home of Webber International University, and Lake Wales, to the south, is Avon Park. West, across Clinch Lake stretches U.S. Highway 27, one of the main traffic corridors for the state of Florida. Pasture land, citrus groves and a few retirement mobile home communities surround the town at this time.

For the last eighty years or so Frostproof’s base commerce has been citrus and cattle. Citrus growers ship fresh fruit all over the world from Ben Hill Griffin, Inc. in Frostproof and Hunt Bros. in Lake Wales. Fresh Florida juice is shipped world wide from Frostproof by Cargill Citro-America and through Florida Natural in Lake Wales. Some of the Valencia oranges grown on these sunny hills end up in Tropicana Juice in Brandon, Florida.

A second source of commerce for the area is winter residents who own second homes or mobile homes and winter here where the climate is considered mild and sunny.

Today, the population is about 3,000 residents. The city is 2.8 square miles, but several annexations are in process (June 2006). The city provides water service to approximately 1,200 customers, but that number fluctuates in the winter season. A number of historic buildings are in the process of being renovated in the downtown area. Downtown features shops, banks, doctors offices, churches, parks, a library, art gallery, an historic museum and a lake at either end of the main east/west road, Wall Street. Favorite recreation of area residents includes: hunting, fishing, boating, swimming, skiing, racquetball, soccer, softball, baseball, basketball and little league. Home town high school football games always draw large crowds.

How Frostproof got it’s unusual name:

In the early 1880’s the Roger Brothers and G.W. Hendry, fishermen and hunters, came to our wilderness area and built two small cabins. They wanted to use the cabins when they came out to fish and hunt. They  platted a small subdivision and called it Keystone.

In 1886, Stephen W. Carson, who lived in Ft. Meade, came over and entered the wilderness, to find game running everywhere and fish jumping in our lakes. Also the temperature was six to ten degrees warmer than other areas. He went back home and told his wife Permelia that they were moving to this paradise. So they moved and he and his two sons, Joe and Munzy, built a 12 foot by 15 foot house and used a 36 foot tent to live in. They had chosen a high hill above Clinch Lake for their home. Their two daughters, Sophronia and Mamie were also with them. They lived here alone until 1892 when a few more families came. Since they got their mail from Ft. Meade, delivered by a man on horseback, the group met to apply for a post office and decide on a name for the post office and town. The vote was almost unanimous for the name, Lakemont. Joe Carson. son of Stephen W. Carson, cast his vote for Frostproof.

The application had to be taken to the Ft. Meade postmaster to be sent to Washington D.C. Joe Carson offered to take the application to the Ft. Meade postmaster and changed the name on the way. When Walter Overrocker received his postmaster appointment, it was for Frostproof, not Lakemont. The date was Dec. 8, 1892. He served as postmaster for 22 years and the post office was located in the Overrocker home until the last few years when it was moved to Wall Street.

There was a freeze February 1895, and the fruit trees were cut back but sprouted and bore fruit in a few months. Then another freeze in 1898 caused the settlers to think the Frostproof name was dishonest,
so they had it changed to Lakemont. Later they found that the fruit trees north, south, east and west of us had ben killed, but our trees came back out and bore fruit. So after eight years named Lakemont, the
name was restored August 24, 1906, and has remained ever since.

When August Felt was in Japan just after WWII ended, he went into a cable office to send a cable to his wife. He wrote out the complete address Mrs. August Felt, 121 W C Street, Frostproof, Florida United States of America. The cable office manager looked in his book and then crossed out all of the address but Mrs. August Felt, Frostproof. Then he said in broken English - “There’s only one in the world.”