Lake Wales is a city in Polk County, Florida. It is part of the Lakeland–Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 16,361 at the 2020 census. A survey by W.A. Williams and J. Jackson, deputy surveyors of the State of Florida was made of the region around present-day Lake Wales. The area was considered to be uninhabitable by early settlers. By 1879, the land around the present city was surveyed again by Sidney Irving Wailes, an agent for the Florida Land and Improvement Co., who changed the name of a lake, then known as Watts Lake, to Lake Wailes.
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