August 22, 1923 Lake Wales Highlander
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Last updated 8/22/2023 at 11:04am
Courtesy Lake Wales Public Library Archives
In August on 1923 it was announced that there were already 340 telephones connected to the Lake Wales telephone exchange, a growth of almost 200 percent in only two years. That total included 21 phones on a line running to Mountain Lake and Lake of the Hills. A new line was being run to connect the town to Bartow. In other news, local resident A.G. Zipperer, 80, brought a story to the paper about his grandchild, Earl Garrett, who was fortunate enough to have had six living grandparents at birth, easily topping a story from the Tampa Tribune.
The Lake Wales Highlander of 100 years ago reveals much about the history of our community.
Each week the Lake Wales News will publish a front-page image of the former Lake Wales Highlander from 100 years earlier, tracking the growth of the community a century ago, when Florida was in the midst of a great land price boom and rapid population growth.
The images are retrieved from the digital archives of the Lake Wales Public Library.
The Lake Wales Highlander eventually became The Daily Highlander, and under several different names was published six times a week on Sunday mornings and Monday through Friday afternoons until 1995.
The original Lake Wales News was a weekly broadsheet newspaper that also served the community for many decades, later changing to a tabloid format before closing six years ago.
Lake Wales was among only a handful of small communities that supported two local newspapers, a mark of the level of literacy and community interest here.
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