Lake Wales Ridge

The Lake Wales Ridge is a spine of ancient sand dunes that runs about 100 miles down the center of the Florida peninsula, from Lake County south into Highlands County. When sea level was much higher, a million or more years ago, its crest stood above the water as a chain of islands, and plants and animals isolated on them evolved into species found nowhere else. The ridge now holds one of the highest concentrations of rare and endemic species in the continental United States. Iron Mountain, the hill topped by Bok Tower, is one of the ridge's high points at about 298 feet above sea level, among the highest ground on the peninsula. Edward Bok, a Dutch-born magazine editor, chose it for the singing tower and gardens he dedicated in 1929. The scrub on the ridge is home to the Florida scrub-jay, the sand skink, which swims through loose sand, the blue-tailed mole skink, and a long list of rare plants, among them scrub lupine and pygmy fringe tree. Many of them live on small, scattered patches of dry white sand. Those patches are small because the ridge's well-drained soil and warm air above its many lakes made it ideal for citrus. Groves, and later subdivisions, replaced most of the original scrub. What remains is protected in a string of preserves, including the Archbold Biological Station and the Lake Wales Ridge National Wildlife Refuge.