Est. 1926 · National Register of Historic Places (1991) · Lake Okeechobee Region History · Florida Sugar Industry Heritage · J. Clinton Shepherd Everglades Mural
The Clewiston Inn opened in 1926 as the anchor hospitality property for a planned sugar-industry town on the southwest shore of Lake Okeechobee. The Clewiston Company — the real estate and development arm of Swedish-American entrepreneur Bror Dahlberg's Southern Sugar Company — financed and built the structure, designed by West Palm Beach architect L. Phillips Clarke and Edgar S. Wortman in Classical Revival style.
The original inn sat on what was then an unprotected waterfront. It weathered the 1926 and 1928 Lake Okeechobee hurricanes — the latter being one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history, killing approximately 2,500 people in south Florida — before fire destroyed the building in 1937. The rebuilt structure, completed in 1938, retained the Classical Revival character of the original.
Ownership of the inn transferred to the United States Sugar Corporation in 1931, when Charles Stewart Mott formed that company upon acquiring Southern Sugar's assets after its 1929 bankruptcy. U.S. Sugar held the property until 2007, when it was sold to Big Lake Hotels. Clewiston Hospitality LLC acquired the property in 2011. The inn now operates under the Americas Best Value Inn brand by Sonesta.
The Everglades Cocktail Lounge retains a 360-degree wildlife mural created in the early 1940s by Palm Beach artist J. Clinton Shepherd, who spent months at the inn making field trips to the Everglades to sketch subjects. The inn was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 21, 1991 (reference number 91000106), and remains the oldest hotel in the Lake Okeechobee region.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clewiston_Inn
- https://www.wflx.com/story/9616647/spirits-felt-at-historic-florida-inn/
- https://www.floridahauntedhouses.com/real-haunt/clewiston-inn.html
Switchboard calls from vacant roomTouching/hair-grabbingApparitionsUnexplained sounds near kitchen
The Clewiston Inn's management has not hidden its haunted reputation. General Manager Christa Hill told local media that the property had hosted multiple paranormal investigations, with investigators identifying four distinct presences in the building.
The most specifically documented is Anita Conklin, a real person who lived in Room 255 with her husband, the manager of the Miami Seaquarium, for a period of years before dying in the room in 1994. Co-owner Floyd Salkey described the activity attributed to Conklin in direct terms: guests report their hair being grabbed inside the room, an experience he interpreted as Conklin asserting possession of her space. The switchboard anomaly — lights indicating an incoming call from Room 255 when it is vacant — is the most consistently reported and most verifiable-in-principle phenomenon, and the one most often cited by staff.
Room 118 has its own reported figure: a woman's apparition appearing near the window. Staff near the kitchen describe clothing being tugged and a persistent sense of presence. The specific identities behind the Room 118 and kitchen presences are not named in documented accounts.
The Everglades Lounge, with its intact 1940s Shepherd mural, is the inn's most photographed architectural feature and frames the paranormal narrative in a building that has a genuinely layered human history — hurricanes, fire, sugar-industry ownership, and decade after decade of transient guests.
Notable Entities
Anita Conklin
Where this legend is told
