During the "boom" period of the 1920’s, a great many changes occurred in Okeechobee County. One of those changes, which opened the county to the outside would was the construction of the Conners Highway. While much has been written about the road, and its effects on Okeechobee and other small communities on the east side of Lake Okeechobee, little is really known about W.J. Conners, the man who was the moving force behind the road.

An article from the Buffalo News by Bud Wacker in 1988 gives us a little more insight into the man behind the road which bore his name. Conners is remembered by people in western new York as a newspaper publisher who merged the Enquirer. The Courier, and the Express into the late Courier-Express. Others remember his as the organizer of the Great Lakes Transit Corporation. The company owned three passenger steamers and 21 freighters.

Mr. Conners began his career by ferrying workmen across the Ohio Ship Canal for pennies. He left school at 13 to begin this career. His years of working on the docks with the longshoremen endowed him with the colorful language of those men. Many of this quotes were so colorful, much to their content had to be censored.

He was also a street paving contractor in Buffalo, and a tavern owner, as well, on his journey toward becoming a millionaire. But, it was the publishing empire he spearheaded which made his fortune secure. "He is best remembered in Florida as the first man to bring the Tin Lizzie to Lake Okeechobee in 1924, but only after he build a road for it through a swamp and at his own expense. That’s the Buffalo millionaire Floridians know," Mr. Wacker says in his article.

According to Lawerence E, Will in A Craker History of Okeechobee, W.J. (Fingey) Conners first heard about the Everglades at a party celebrating the opening of the Palm Beach Canal in Palm Beach in 1917. The result of that was he invested %40,000 acres of sawgrass muck six miles east of Canal Point. His original plan to make it the largest farm in Florida was something less than successful. He next bought the Southern States Land Company’s experimental farm and re-named it Connersville. He envisioned it as a stock farm, but the high-priced cattle, unable to digest the sawgrass grazing, died. His next effort was to import large groups of Georgia hogs, but the floods came and they were soon running loose through the thousands of acres of custard apple woods along the east side of the lake.

According to Mr. Will, "Conners, still had some money he hadn’t spent, so he up and bought all the lakeshore land still lying loose between Okeechobee and Canal Point, too. This 12,000 acres cost him another $700,000 and he hadn’t cleared a crying dollar on any single acre he’d ever owned. There would be 19 miles along the Palm Beach Canal and 33 miles along the lakeshore. The 52-mile road was to be something of a wonder. It would be build on soft muck, and the foundation and drainage were buried in the unknown. Mr. Conners, evidently an impatient man, decided he wanted the road built in the shortest time possible. He initially spent close to a million dollars in an effort to get the project started, and then he met R.Y. Patterson. He as an engineer who seemed able to put Mr. Conners’ ideas into action, almost as quick as he thought of them. The partnership was a successful one.

Mr. Wacker describes the construction this way:

"Ballast for the 19-mile stretch from the end of the old military road known as "Twenty-Mile Bend" to the lake came from the deepening of the West Pam Beach Canal with four dipper dredges. This wet marl and porous rock compressed the muck from five feet to half that depth, and upon this was built a 24-foot-wide embankment: topping it all was the 16-foot-wide two-lane road. "The entire route was topped by 7 ½ inches of compacted crushed rock and treated with oil. Later, after the road had time to settle, a topping of three inches of fine crushed rock was added and dressed with asphalt. Work was done around the clock.

The first load of rock was hauled into place on October 16, 1923. Just eight months later, on June 23, 1924, the last load was dumped into place and two days later, Conners started collecting tolls. The cost of traveling the road from its beginning to the boll both located at the foot of Parrott Avenue was $1.50. His accomplishment was hailed nationwide because he had accomplished what some skeptics said was impossible. He had airplanes drop 30,000 leaflets on Palm Beach County inviting everyone to join him in a motorcade over the new highway. They would leave Palm Beach at 3 a.m. on July 4th, led by none other than Mr. Conners himself.

The Jacksonville Times Union, in its issue of July 24, 1924, declared that "Okeechobee City today is a vast ocean of humanity." Most sources estimated that a crowd of about 15,000 people joined in the gala. There was a barbecue which was held at a house that Conners had build for himself on the lakeshore by the toll booth. It was a big house with porches all around, and it was the site of quite a few parties in the months to come.

The highway was a major success, and it was reported that it was due to Conners promotional skill. "He printed, at his own expense, a free road map advertising the advantages of the highway connecting the east and west coasts of the peninsula. "As he knew they would, those maps brought more and more business to the lake. Daily toll receipts alone were calculated at an average of $2,000 a day," said the article by Mr. Wacker.

Mr. Patterson remained on Conners’ payroll when the road was completed and turned his talents toward promoting the sale of the land along the roadway. He produced an elaborate pictorial pamphlet in full color. It had been said that the sale of small tracks of the Okeechobee palmetto prairies brought as much as a million dollars a month. One of those sales was a 6,000 acre track at Port Mayaca, which was sold to the Phipps estate.

In 1930, residents in Palm Beach County requested their county commissioners to either lease or buy the highway to eliminate the tolls. The original cost of the road was approximately $1,800,000. The heirs to Conners’ estate came up with an asking price of $660,000 to sell it. The tolls ended on June 10, 1930. The county later defaulted on its payments for the road, and the State of Florida became the sole owner of the highway.