Paris, Pisa . . . and Polk County. No visit would be complete without visiting their famous tourist towers. And Florida has not one but three historic towers that draw visitors near and far to experience a bird’s-eye view of the sunshine state.
Perched on hilltops along the Lake Wales Ridge (an ancient sand dune that runs up the spine of Florida) these quirky roadside attractions celebrate peace, prosperity and citrus. In their heyday, they saw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Today they’re monuments to Florida’s colorful tourism history.
Citrus Tower – Clermont



When Florida Turnpike began offering a faster route south in the early 1960s — followed closely by the opening of Disney World in 1971 — the Citrus tower lost much of its stature.
Bok Tower – Lake Wales

Perched atop the summit of Iron Mountain, Bok Tower is the capstone on one of Florida’s tallest ‘mountains.’ Bok Tower and its famous gardens were the vision of Ladies Home Journal Editor Edward Bok and his wife, Mary Louise. The tower was designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Olmsted and dedicated as a gift ‘to the American people’ by Calvin Coolidge in 1929.



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Lake Placid Tower



Postcards Collection
If You Go:
Photos by Michael Warren / iStock / Getty Images. Historic photos from FloridaMemory.com
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