Redesigned park maintains the tradition of local icon.
She was not afraid to try anything. She swam in the creeks or rivers, avoiding the alligators, pumped handcars racing along the railroad tracks, and loved to fly. At 12 years old, she rode one of the first trains to travel from Plant City to Tampa, accompanied by her father, James Taylor Evers, a prominent Plant City merchant. In 1925, she flew from Paris to London with her sister and landed unexpectedly in a cow pasture where the pilot repaired the plane and continued to London.
Rowena Lee Evers was born in 1871 in Suwannee County, then moved to Alafia, Hillsborough County, in 1876 when her father moved the family there to start a business in the booming days of free land and the new steamboat river transportation. With the rumors of the railroad being built across Florida, in about 1878, James T. Evers bought acreage in a new area he named Shiloh. There he built his store, a sawmill, a grist mill, a cotton gin, and offered merchandise from farm tools to ready-made clothing, to shoes, to farm produce.
Evers made frequent trips to Tampa for supplies using his own horse or mule and wagon. He dreamed of making that trip on a train. He followed the stories about the soon-to-be railroad, and when he heard that it was now expected to run about three miles south of Shiloh, he bought land along the predicted route and moved his store and all his merchandise to the village that became Plant City. Rowena Evers was a part of all this. She loved the excitement of the store, and talked about meeting the men from the Seminole Tribe who would exchange gator meat and skins for goods. The new store, built about 1883, was the first to be established in the new town. James T. Evers died in 1884 at the age of 39 and was buried in Shiloh Cemetery.
Roe Evers was 13 at the time. She loved her father very much and remembered all he taught her as she grew up in the young town bursting with activity and potential. The Evers family and the Mays family may have met in the Alafia area years earlier. Now in Plant City, Roe and Samuel Edward Mays, who moved from Alafia to Plant City in 1887, both with driving personalities, met and were married in 1892. Rowena Evers Mays was 21; Samuel Edward Mays was 28 and well-established in the Plant City business world and the citrus industry.
Roe quickly became the most prominent Plant City socialite. She was an early member of the First Baptist Church of Plant City, across the street from their opulent home on Collins Street, and a leadership member of the Order of the Eastern Star. In addition to her husband, and later her son, both of whom served as mayor, Rowena Mays was also active in civic affairs. In addition to the Woman’s Club of Plant City, Roe belonged to the Plant City Music Club and hosted many parties in her elegant home. She was also a talented golfer and belonged to the Tampa Women’s Golf Association, where she also played poker.
After Samuel Mays died in 1932, Roe ran the business interests, including real estate, their stores, and hundreds of acres of groves. She loved to travel, and in addition to trips to Europe, she took immense pleasure in her frequent trips to New York City. When the movement to build a hospital in Plant City began, the leaders were able to acquire only five acres. In 1945, Rowena Mays donated five more acres to the hospital campaign. In addition to the hospital, there was to be a nurse’s home, which would then be named for Rowena Mays. It was never built.
After her death in May 1964, at the age of 93, Roe had two parks named after her. In November 1964, Rowena Lee Mays Park was established on South Evers Street just south of Renfro Street. A bandstand was to be erected for the upcoming Christmas season. In March 1965, Rowena Lee Mays Park gained a monument and became the home of the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) marble drinking fountain.
With the growing expansion of the McGinnes Lumber Company, the City of Plant City sold Rowena Lee Mays Park’s Evers Street property to the lumber company and provided for the name of the new park west of the tennis courts and Dort Street. Rowena Lee Mays Park has been situated at this location since 1978, being improved several times, and is now to be the site of Rowena Mays Athletic Park. Her new park will include basketball, tennis, and pickleball courts, a pavilion, grills, and picnic tables, all of which we are sure she would enjoy. Congratulations Roe!
The history has been compiled as part of the Plant City History & Photo Archives, Dr. Scotty and Hsiu Huang History Center, Writers in Residence Program.
On November 18, the City of Plant City broke ground to rebuild Rowena Mays Park. The anticipated completion of the work is November 2026.When the project is finished, among other amenities, it will boast two lighted basketball courts, two lighted tennis courts, and eight lighted pickleball courts. The cost for the construction will come in at $5,900,000.
Rowena Mays photos courtesy of the Plant City History and Photo Archives.
