Inglis, Florida

Inglis is a small town on US Highway 19 at the southern end of Levy County. In the summer of 1961, Elvis Presley came to Inglis and spent a couple months in the area (mostly in Yankeetown) filming "Follow That Dream." There is still a historical marker on Follow That Dream Parkway (County Road 40, an extension of State Route 40 west of US Highway 19) commemorating his stay.

Inglis made the evening news in 2001 when then-mayor Carolyn Risher issued a town proclamation banning Satan from the town. The text of the proclamation was painted on signs and the signs placed on wooden posts installed at all the road entrances to Inglis. This caused a lot of controversy and elicited a threat of lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. In the end, the town council rescinded the proclamation, the signs were removed to locations on private property and the mayor reimbursed the town for the use of government stationery.

I drove through Inglis for the first time late on a Friday afternoon in early April. I stopped along Follow That Dream Parkway to take the photos on this page and had a conversation with a local business owner. He mentioned that Inglis is trying to implement zoning restrictions within a defined municipal business district (which is comprised of a couple blocks around Inglis Town Hall on Follow That Dream Parkway). He pointed out that within that municipal district are the only two buildings constructed in Inglis in perhaps the last ten years. He also pointed out a couple other buildings in that district that would probably have been bulldozed long ago in most other municipalities, but these still had people living in them.