Road side attractions were big in post WWII Florida. In those days before the Federal Interstate Highway System motoring tourists would travel what we might now consider “back roads” through all parts of the state.  Local entrepreneurs and Chambers of Commerce would do everything they could think of to get motorists to stop and spend at local attractions. The big draws were places like Silver Springs and Cypress Gardens, showing off Florida’s natural wonders. But smaller road side attractions were everywhere. Gator jungles seemed as common as convenience stores are now.

  But in the Polk County city of Lake Wales, one of the attractions was a road itself.

  On this little stretch of 5^th Street, if you stopped your car and put it in neutral it would roll up hill.  No one knows for sure who first noticed this quirk. One story is a county road worker stopped his truck at the spot and saw it roll up hill.

  That had to be around 1950. This map in the collection of the Library of Florida History shows the roads and platted lots of the town in the late ‘40s, and there is no mention of 5^th Street’s magical qualities. But, once it was noticed, there was plenty of mention.

  Dubbed “Spook Hill”, signs were put up to instruct motorists where and how to defy gravity.

  Now, advertising the spot as one of hundreds of such “Gravity Hills” around the world where “a slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope due to the layout of the surrounding land, creating the optical illusion a car left out of gear will roll uphill,” is not exactly a catchy marketing plan.

  So Spook Hill was, variously, an ancient Indian burial ground, a nexus of ancient supernatural powers or perhaps the unmarked grave of a former pirate who retired to Lake Wales (which is well inland), was killed in a bar fight and buried along 5^th Street. Apparently he would draw you in or push you away from his grave, depending on which way your car was facing and where you figured he was buried.

  Rational explanation aside, it is still fun to do today.  Lots of tourists, risking a fender bender perhaps, do: (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g34371-d109642-Reviews-Spook_Hill-Lake_Wales_Florida.html). 

  The fame and “impact on culture” over 70 or so years has earned Spook Hill a place on the National Park Services’ National Register of Historical Places.