How Frostproof was named:

Nestled between two pristine lakes, this rural community is likened to “Mayberry.” It is the hub of the Florida citrus industry with orange groves to prove it.

When the Post Office Department rejected the name Keystone City because it might be confused with Keystone Heights, another Florida post office, the townspeople submitted the name Lakemont--at least they thought they did. No one had taken Joe Carson seriously when he suggested Frostproof. It was just what you'd expect from an ambitious young man who had just gotten his real estate license and hoped to make his fortune buying and selling land for citrus groves.

Walter Overocker listened to Carson make his case even as he wrote Lakemont on a government form and put the form in an envelope. Before being sent to Washington, D.C., the form had to be signed by the postmaster in Fort Meade, 18 miles west. Carson said he'd be glad to take it there--he could use a good ride--and Overocker could see no reason why not. But a few weeks later he got back a letter from Washington saying he had been appointed postmaster of Frostproof, Florida, Post Office. Carson had crossed out Lakemont and written Frostproof beside it. Overocker was angry, but didn't want to put off opening the post office any longer, so he let it go.

The name did not come with a guarantee. Eight years after it became official (1886), the town had its first recorded frost--December 29, 1894, followed closely by its second, February 8, 1895. Orange and grapefruit growers who had put off picking until prices rose lost a year's pay. Others saw the frost kill the buds on what would have been their first commercial crop the next fall. After another killing frost in 1897, the townspeople, embarrassed about the misleading name, successfully petitioned to have it changed to Lakemont. But the powerful Carson family never gave up and managed to get it changed back to Frostproof in 1906.

In June of 1899, J. W. Carson (of the first family of Frostproof) wrote: "A thousand other places have names beginning with 'Lake'. There is but one Frostproof in the known world. It is between Lakes Clinch and Ystopogayoxee in southeastern Polk County".