Hillcrest Heights, FL

Hillcrest Heights sits east of Crooked Lake in Polk County’s ridge-and-lake country, just south of Babson Park and between Lake Wales and Frostproof. The town recorded 243 residents in the 2020 census. Its best-known local chapter began in 1917, when the Lakeside Club opened on the lake’s south shore. A fire destroyed it the next year; the rebuilt Hillcrest Lodge later hosted visitors including Bobby Jones, Babe Ruth, and William Jennings Bryan. Crooked Lake remains the town’s defining geographic reference, tying its early resort history to the landscape around the municipal boundary.

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Current orientation comes from the same geography. Hillcrest Heights is about nine miles south of Lake Wales and five miles north of Frostproof, with Babson Park immediately to the north and Warner University nearby. The town has no public school of its own; students generally attend Babson Park Elementary and then Frostproof Middle-Senior High School or a Lake Wales charter school. Crooked Lake received Outstanding Florida Water protection in 1987, and Polk County later protected Crooked Lake Prairie, a 525-acre property in the watershed. Hillcrest Heights is a tiny incorporated town tied together by lake history and the roads linking south Polk County communities.