Business View Magazine | October 2020

326 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 URNDALE FLORIDA A uburndale, Florida was founded in the 1880s when Louis McLain, a civil engineer was hired to build a section of Henry B. Plant’s new South Florida Railroad in Polk County. At the same time, Frank Fuller and his father, Reuben, from Chicago, were starting a new community they called Sanitaria along the new set of tracks. What the Fullers needed to make their community successful was a railroad depot, but, as one version of history recounts, the Railroad asked Frank Fuller to donate some land for the depot, and when he refused, decided to build it one mile away, closer to McLain’s land holdings. Sanitaria soon failed and its buildings were torn down and reconstructed near the new depot. The new town was dubbed Auburndale, after the town in Massachusetts. Today, the small city of 17,000 is part of the Lakeland-Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area, located 40 miles northeast of Tampa and 60 miles southwest of Orlando. The city has a total area of 9.3 square miles, of which 44 percent is made up of lakes. Auburndale is mainly a residential community with a focus on providing a variety of sports activities in , place