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The section of U.S. 27 in this part of Florida has changed from a rural, high-speed corridor flanked by citrus groves to a nearly nonstop stretch of subdivisions, shopping centers and traffic lights.
All it took was a series of devastating freezes, a massive rewrite of Polk County's growth map and spillover from the Orlando housing market during the real estate boom.
Lifelong Haines City resident David Gore, who has lived in a home off U.S. 27 since 1974, said the changes have been dramatic, but not unexpected.
"It's not much different from other places in Florida,'' he said. "But I've had visitors who hadn't been here in 15 or 20 years tell me they had trouble finding my house.''
Gore, who spent much of his younger years hunting and roaming the woods in the area north of Haines City, said the corridor has changed in other ways.
He also remembers when it was simply a two-lane road.
"When you went up U.S. 27 and off on some of the roads, you were far from anything and anybody,'' he said.
That's not the picture today.
The increasing urbanization of the U.S. 27 corridor between Haines City and the Lake County line resembles other urban stretches along the highway's Florida 481-mile route from Miami to the Georgia border just north of Tallahassee.
For the full article, visit the Lakeland Ledger.
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