Bradley Junction (also known as Bradley) is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

in southwestern

Polk County, Florida Polk County () is a County (United States), county located in the Central Florida, central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. The county population was 725,046, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, and estimated to be 818,330, as ...

, United States. Its population was 542 as of the 2020 census.

History

Bradley Junction is named for the railroad junction located in the community, which was historically the junction between the

Seaboard Air Line Railroad The Seaboard Air Line Railroad , known colloquially as the Seaboard Railroad during its time, was an American railroad that existed from April 14, 1900, until July 1, 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime ri ...

(the east-west track) and the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway (the north-south track). The junction itself is named after phosphate mining company executive Peter B. Bradley, who chartered the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railway in 1905. The railroad junction still exists today and both lines are now owned by

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of track, it is the lead ...

. In the mid 1990s, the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum (now the

Florida Railroad Museum The Florida Railroad Museum is a railroad museum located in Parrish, Florida. The museum operates a heritage railroad and offers round-trip tourist excursions along six miles of the former Seaboard Air Line Railway, Seaboard Air Line Sarasota Su ...

) moved the railroad station from Bradley Junction to Parrish. The depot was then consumed by a fire soon after the move.

Geography

Bradley Junction is located at 27.795 degrees north, 81.98056 degrees west (27.795, -81.98056). The

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

for the community is 135 feet above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

.Bradley Junction profile from Hometown Locator
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Demographics

Education

The community of Bradley Junction is served by Polk County Public Schools.

References

External links

Bradley Junction profile from Hometown LocatorMap of Bradley Junction from Mapquest
{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Polk County, Florida Census-designated places in Florida Unincorporated communities in Florida Former municipalities in Florida Rail junctions in the United States