The Murals of Lake Placid, Florida

It is a leisurely drive of less than three hours with a minimum of hectic motorways or other four-lane highways and offers get-away to a totally different Florida. We actually experienced stretches of road void of any traffic. What a breather after the traffic on I-75 and Rt-41.

So now I have your attention, my suggested route leads you on Rt-41 towards Miami, but you turn to the north on SR-29 through Immokalee and LaBelle to Rt-27 at Palmdale and Lake Placid.

This town in central Florida, originally called Lake Stearns, is almost in the middle of a horizontal line between Sarasota and West Palm Beach across the state, 15 miles south of Sebring. Surrounded by 29 lakes, it is here that in 1925 E.E. Stewart, A.H. Ernest and E. Morrow built, for its time, a large citrus operation. In 1926 Dr. Melvin Dewey, who invented the library cataloging decimal system and was also founder of the famous Lake Placid Club in New York, moved here and bought a sizable parcel of land. A year later he convinced the state and town to re-name the Florida town: “Lake Placid.” Earnest Oakley Hunt and Robert Gray also wanted to profit from the economic heyday in the area and in 1947 built Ernest’s dream; a 240 feet high panoramic observation tower with magnificent views over 40 miles of the Florida landscape of lakes and citrus groves. Through the special company they formed for this dream they spent a whopping 2.5 million, by today’s standards, to complete the project with several observation decks and a restaurant on the ground floor. Originally, it was a tremendous promotional success and called the “Tower of Peace,” and the “Happiness Tower.” Amongst several gimmicks, the tower had a phone booth on the top deck advertised as the “highest pay phone in Florida.” However, unfortunately, the tower never earned enough income to cover the expenses. Struggling through many years and different owners including T-Mobile using it as a cell tower, it closed to the public in 2003 and its restaurant finally gave up in 2015.

As the economy declined and the town seemed to disappear into obscurity, Bob and Harriet Porter created the “Lake Placid Mural Society” and convinced painter Keith Goodson to paint twenty murals on buildings downtown. Eventually, that project extended to a total of forty-nine murals today all depicting a colorful and imaginative representation of Lake Placid’s history, businesses and professionals. There are numerous towns with murals in Florida, but to my knowledge none nearly as beautifully executed as here in Lake Placid. It has effectively made a typical Florida town into an impressive outdoor gallery drawing a large number of visitors. 

Additionally, the town boasts to be the Caladium Capital of the world, producing over 90% of this distinct flower in the United States and holding a yearly Caladium Festival in July. Henscratch Winery and Tropical Winery offer a cozy rest area with wine tastings and craft beer flights and if you meet clowns in town, they probably study at the American Clown Museum and School from where over 1,500 clowns have graduated.