Myakka City, Florida

[6] Myakka City was founded by Frank Earl Knox (1870–1950) in 1915, after purchasing early pioneer William Durrance’s land a year earlier.

[12] Knox chose to call the new town Myakka City to differentiate it from Old Miakka, an early pioneer settlement that lay to the west.

[14] The East and West Coast Railway, a subsidiary of Seaboard Air Line Railroad, was constructed at the same time the post office opened.

[15] The opening was delayed by several days due to floods destroying Horse Creek Bridge, affecting the areas between Arcadia and Myakka.

In addition to a railroad station, the town also sported a four-room school building with three teachers, plus two churches, three stores, a warehouse, a hotel, and a large garage.

Compiled in the late 1930s and first published in 1939, the Florida guide listed Myakka City's population as 125 and described it as:a roadside settlement and trading center for near-by truck farmers and citrus growers along the Miakka River ...

Almost all are landowners; their sun-bleached one-story frame houses, with center hall or 'breezeway,' sit well back from sandy roads.

They are raised high above the ground on posts to prevent dry rot and to escape attacks of termites; all have vine-shaded verandas, occupied on Sunday by a rocking-chair brigade; even the poorest houses have well-tended vegetable and flower gardens about them, and in many cases a few citrus trees.