Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Lake Wales, FL

Lake Wales is a city in Polk County founded in 1911-12 by the Lake Wales Land Company, which bought some 5,000 acres beside the lake that surveyor Sidney Irving Wailes had named Lake Wailes in 1879.

The city spells its name 'Wales,' but the lake it sits beside is still spelled Lake Wailes.

The 2020 census counted 16,361 residents in Lake Wales, up from 14,225 in 2010, and the Census Bureau's July 2025 estimate reached 18,650.

Census QuickFacts counts about 6,924 households in Lake Wales (2020-2024), averaging 2.37 people per household.

Lake Wales is nicknamed 'The City of the Carillon' for Bok Tower Gardens, where Edward W. Bok's 205-foot Singing Tower houses a 60-bell carillon.

President Calvin Coolidge dedicated Bok's Mountain Lake Sanctuary on February 1, 1929; its gardens, laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. across roughly 250 acres, are now a National Historic Landmark.

Bok Tower crowns Iron Mountain, which rises to roughly 300 feet above sea level — among the highest points on the Florida peninsula.

The city sits atop the Lake Wales Ridge, a roughly 150-mile-long spine of ancient sand islands that stayed above water when most of Florida lay submerged beneath the sea.

On North Wales Drive, Spook Hill is a famous 'gravity hill' where cars placed in neutral appear to roll uphill; the optical illusion has drawn motorists since the 1950s and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

The Lake Wales History Museum preserves the area's citrus, turpentine, and cattle heritage inside the old 1928 Atlantic Coast Line railroad depot.