Background / History

Polk County is located in the U.S. State of Florida. As of 2004 the population was 524,389. The county Seat is Bartow, Florida. Its largest city is Lakeland. Polk County became Florida’s 39th county on February 8, 1861, when the State of Florida divided Hillsborough County into eastern and western halves. The eastern half was named Polk, in honor of the 11th President of the United States, James Knox Polk. Following the Civil War, the county commission established the county seat on 120 acres donated in the central part of the county. Bartow, the county seat, was named after Francis S. Bartow, a confederate Colonel from Georgia who was the first confederate officer to die in battle during the first battle of the Civil War. Col. Bartow was buried in Savannah, GA with military honors, and promoted posthumously to the rank of brigadier general. Fort Blount , as Bartow was then known, in a move to honor one of the first fallen heroes of the Confederacy, was one of several towns and counties in the South that changed their name to Bartow. Polk County’s unofficial nickname is “Imperial Polk County” which it received in the 1930’s because most of the major Florida roads went through the county. An allusion to the Imperial Rome saying “All roads run through Rome.”