{"id":2587,"date":"2024-05-20T20:23:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T00:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=2587"},"modified":"2024-05-20T21:51:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T01:51:53","slug":"another-rural-icon-disappears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=2587","title":{"rendered":"Another Rural Icon Disappears In Polk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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There was once something in Polk County that was an essential part of its rural ambience.
That was the one-lane wooden bridges that greeted motorists who visited the backroads in search of a different experience than they would encounter in the more developed areas of this county.
That era is pretty much over.
This week the Polk County Commission is scheduled to quietly approve an agreement with an Orlando-based developer to replace the second-to-the-last one-lane wooden bridge on a public road in Polk County with a two-lane structure.
This involves the bridge over Horsehoe Creek east of Davenport, which was originally built in 1956.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The developer will pay to reconstruct the bridge and will receive impact fee credits for a project that benefits his development in the first place, but that is how Polk County development regulations work.
That will leave a bridge on the Avon Park Air Force Range as the last of its kind in Polk.
Others, such as the Marion Creek Bridge east of Haines City and the Pony Creek bridge in the Green Swamp were “improved” a decade or so ago.
The new bridge will accommodate traffic from a planned 1,311-unit development proposed by Reedy Creek Isle LLC that will wrap around existing rural homesteads on Horseshoe Creek Road and abut Horse Creek Scrub. the first site purchased by the Polk County Enviornmental Lands Program in the 1990s, and some of the Lake Marion Creek conservation land purchased by the South Florida Water Management District.
The development site will have to deal with endangered species, such as sand skinks and gopher tortoises. Highlands tiger beetles, a species unknown until the 1980s, prowls the open sand adjacent to the site and probably the site itself.
Although Polk County is dealing with the bridge project, the development itself is part of an aggressive expansion of Davenport’s city limits along with the taxpayer- subsidized extension of Power Line Road to the west of this sprawl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Horse Creek Scrub lies in the lower right portion of this image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you are concerned about this, just relax. The fix is already in. on this project
But it is a cautionary tale that land people once never dreamed would become urbanized will fall to the bulldozer.
That is why the Polk County Environmental Lands Program was and will continue to be important to protect the county’s remaining green spaces.


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There was once something in Polk County that was an essential part of its rural ambience.That was the one-lane wooden bridges that greeted motorists who visited the backroads in search of a different experience than they would encounter in the more developed areas of this county.That era is pretty much over.This week the Polk County […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2587"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2601,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions\/2601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}