Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Florida isn’t flat

DID YOU KNOW?

Cars appear to roll uphill at Spook Hill in Lake Wales, in Central Florida. SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTO

Cars appear to roll uphill at Spook Hill in Lake Wales, in Central Florida. SHUTTERSTOCK PHOTO

Many visitors to Florida are surprised to learn we have four seasons (granted, the differences between some of them are rather subtle).

They also mistakenly believe the state is flat.

It’s not.

All you need to do is journey an hour or so north of Lake Okeechobee, and you enter another, less swampy, world of rolling hills that continue up to Georgia.

In Central Florida, we have Spook Hill, a so-called gravity hill near Lake Wales, in which cars appear to roll uphill. Gravity hills can be found all over the world and continue to spur curiosity as cars appear to roll up hill when placed in neutral.

But the highest point in Florida, Britton

Hill in the Panhandle, is only 345 feet above sea level.

The highest point on the Sunshine State’s peninsula is Sugarloaf Mountain, near Clermont. That’s a whopping 312 feet.

For comparison, the highest point in Palm Beach County is near Jupiter, at 53 feet above sea level, according to www.peakbagger.com. In Charlotte County, the land rises to 74 feet at a spot east of Punta Gorda, near the county’s border with Glades County. In Lee County, that number dips to 32 feet above sea level, somewhere southeast of the heart of Fort Myers. That’s lower than Collier County, which has a high point of 40 to 45 feet above sea level northeast of Naples. ¦

One response to “Florida isn’t flat”

  1. CHRISTOPHER says:

    The only people who think FL is flat, are those who have never ventured outside of South Florida or its coast lines.
    A large chunk of the state is rather hilly. Especially the central and northern part of the state.
    Orlando is an exception to this rule.
    Orlando has few hills, but Orlando is 110 feet above sea level. And seeing basement homes in Orlando is a thing.
    There are actually a few basement restaurants/bars in the downtown area.

    I make the basement comment because you can’t not build a basement in south FL. Most of the soil is sand. And most places down there are barely above sea level.

    But if you wanna see hills in the Orlando area. Juss take a 40min drive northwest to Clermont.
    You’ll like like your driving thru the countryside of Pennsylvania.
    It’s truly beautiful.
    And in these parts of FL you actually get color in the fall.
    But FL doesn’t start for us until around Thanksgiving time lol.

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