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Bok Tower

Birding / Hiking / Adventuring Roadtrip Info

ROUGH DRAFT
Andrew Thoreson
Dec 2021
 Typical view [?]
Photo Galleries
Typical View (23)

Snapshots! (10)
GRADES: Click each for info, * = Note
How Big Not Rated
Importance Not Rated
Revisit? D
Birding D
Wildlife D
Summer Heat B
Terrain A
Fun Hike C *
Maintained A *
Mosquitos A
Biting Files A
Ticks A
NOTE: More of a walk around a campus.
NOTE: A museum to maintenance.
 LOCATION: Accuracy: Read me
Map On Big Map: Click map (or on google maps). Address: 1151 Tower Blvd., Lake Wales, FL, Polk, USA, 33853

1) What It's Like

Lots of garden / planted-plants and side walks around the planted plants. Lots of gift shop, restaurant, and go carts. A tower. A few short paved trails. There's a birdwatching blind but I've never seen birds there. That's really about it.

2) Kinds of Birds

I think I saw a cardinal, blue jay, a kestrel, and a mocking bird.

3) Wildlife

Koi pond, a garden snake, and a squirel. That is all.

4) Amenities

This place is 99% amenities. Restaurant, museum of sorts, 2 docents/guides for every visitor. It feels like a scientology center.

5) Directions

No secrets - look it up on your phone.

6) Dear Ranger

This place is an industry - I don't think they'd read that letter.

7) Time Requirements

It's a bit of a walk to get to the tower. You'll probably spend an hour or so all told.

Experience

This place is basically a little pretty park on a little hill with a tacky ornate tower on it. You can't enter the tower but you can feed some koi fish surrounding it. A women's magazine magnate built the thing in the 1920s from his mound of money. My guess is he built it to attract other rich people to visit his little piece of rural Florida before malaria was quiet beaten here. They try really hard to give the place a purpose - that it was for other people (not sure how that worked), or that he was great (all he seemed to do was swim in money and write other rich people), and that it was a bird and wildlife sanctuary. I've seen many more birds and wildlife in my urban yard which I also call a bird and wildlife sanctuary.

Still I've been here several times so it's pretty enough to stop. I'm just trying to get across that it's not nearly as big of a deal as the PR tries to make it out to be and it certainly isn't brimming with birding opportunities.

In case they like to sue people: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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All images and data © 2016-2024 Andrew Thoreson unless otherwise noted.