| 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 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. |