Remnants of St. Anne Shrine near Lake Wales, Florida, still attract the curious

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04-05-2025

This story is part of our weekly Hidden Gems feature series as the USA TODAY Network – Florida takes readers around the state to highlight some of our most interesting attractions.
Starting in the 1920s, Catholics journeyed annually from Canada to a pastoral site a few miles east of Lake Wales, drawn in part by a relic — what church leaders considered a physical vestige of St. Anne.
A century later, the once-thriving community encircling a small lake is itself a relic. While only fragments of the original settlement remain, the St. Anne Shrine still attracts the curious, though in much thinner numbers.
There is no marker along State Road 60 to indicate a historic site, though some drivers might notice the green sign denoting St. Anne Shrine Road. Turning south off the highway, you will pass between watermelon fields before coming to a narrow, two-lane road that encircles a 15-acre lake.
About halfway around, you find a hint of a bridge, a pair of coquina-covered railings covering some 30 feet along both sides of the road, adorned on the lake side by a pair of low, curving walls. A short distance away, a stone structure stands at the edge of the lake — a conical enclosure set atop four pillars standing upon two flat slabs, the entire edifice perhaps 20 feet tall.
Rick Smith, who lives nearby with his wife, Toni, said that two visitors have stopped at the site on a recent day.
'They come around and they see this, and they stop,' Smith said. 'I'm the unofficial director of where the shrine is, so to speak. Any time anybody stops here, I'll go out and introduce myself and then tell them where the shrine is, that the gentleman that built the shrine also built the bridge and the monument out in the lake, and anything with this type of stonework around the lake.'
In the house they've occupied for about 30 years, the Smiths keep an unofficial archive, including vintage postcards and photocopies of news articles dating to the 1920s, which recall the once vaunted status of the St. Anne Shrine.
Here is the history, as captured in contemporaneous news reporting, documents from the Lake Wales History Center and previous Ledger articles:
Around 1920, Napoleon Pelletier, a French Canadian, visited Florida with his son, who was considered terminally ill.
The boy recovered in the balmier climate of Hesperides, leading other Canadians to begin making winter pilgrimages as a small colony arose around what was then called Lake Helena and is now St. Anne Lake. Hesperides is now recognized only by a road marker along SR 60.
A Catholic bishop soon gave permission for construction of the Church of Ste. Anne des Lacs. A photo from a 1930 edition of the defunct Lake Wales Highlander newspaper shows a small, white church built in a plain style, topped by a sturdy steeple. An account describes the church as standing 'in a grove of tall pines.'
Across from the church, community members built a white, stone platform that held a statue of Jesus. They also constructed the coquina-ringed structure that bore a statue of St. Anne, described in Christian and Islamic tradition as the mother of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus and also known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Congregants posted statues depicting the Stations of the Cross in the woods surrounding the lake.
The faithful also constructed a grotto behind the church, seeking to evoke the site in Lourdes, France, where a girl claimed to have 18 visits from the Virgin Mary in a cave in 1858. The grotto, an assemblage of coquina rocks perhaps 20 feet fall, contained a statue of St. Christopher and a monument to St. Theresa, according to a 1979 article in the Polk County Historical Quarterly.
The church gained an official connection with what is now the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, a national shrine dating to the 1600s. That shrine bequeathed a holy relic, believed to be a piece of a finger bone from St. Anne, stored in a 'beautifully carved golden reliquary,' the Highlander reported.
By the late 1920s, the Shrine of Ste. Anne des Lacs was drawing hundreds of annual visitors from Canada, according to contemporary news reports. The church held masses on Sundays during the winter months.
Catholic pilgrims also visited the site each February to celebrate the anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparition at Lourdes and in July for St. Anne's feast day. A report in the Highlander from Feb. 18, 1930, describes a service in which the High Mass was sung in Latin, with processional hymns sung in French.
'The procession of the Blessed Sacrament moved from the church to the altar, the statue of Ste. Anne being carried by members of the Ste. Anne society and the golden casket by young women of the parish,' the report says.
Priests and bishops from as far away as St. Augustine and New Smyrna Beach presided over ceremonies at the site.
Joyce Pettus, a congregant at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Lake Wales, said she is one of the few living links to the St. Anne Shrine from its era of activity. Pettus, 84, said that her grandparents, Joseph and Stella Gravel (pronounced gra-VELL), were among the French Canadians who once lived along the lake and attended the church.
'It was lovely,' Pettus said. 'The church was a beautiful little church.'
At some point, after Pettus had left the area for college, the wooden church burned down and was replaced by another structure, she said.
'I remember it was concrete, had a window in it, and you could look inside and see a slab with a cloth on it, representing where Jesus had been buried,' she said. 'And the cloth indicated that he had arisen. I remember that being there, and a number of people were married there. Parishioners had baptisms there. I remember playing bingo in the little social hall — well, I didn't play it, but my parents did.'
St. Anne's Shrine also held a Biblical museum, apparently operated by nuns who lived at the site. On a recent afternoon, Rick Smith indicated Pelletier's former home, a two-story house on the lake's western shore, along with houses previously occupied by priests and nuns.
Pettus offered an explanation for the church's demise.
'It eventually got to the point that there were people who were selling all kinds of items, religious items,' she said. 'It became so commercial that the bishop finally had to close it down.'
The Diocese of St. Augustine de-sanctified the church in the 1960s, according to previous Ledger reporting. Much of the shrine was removed. Pettus said that she does not know what happened to any remnants that were taken.
The stone platform for the statue of Jesus still stands on the inside of the road circling the lake. The base bears a red cross on all four sides, while the slab above bears inscriptions in Latin: Adveniat Regnum Tuum ('Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven') and Cor Jesu, Pax Nostra, Miserere Nobis ('Heart of Jesus, our peace, have mercy on us').
All that remains of the church is a set of three steps that once led to its entrance. Weathered and darkened, the steps sit disconnectedly in the front yard of a private home.
The one element of the St. Anne Shrine that endures, largely intact, is the grotto, easily missed by drivers as it is set back from the road and concealed behind a stand of oak and palm trees. Approaching the grotto, one notices a marble ground slab inscribed, 'In Memory of Napoleon Pelletier.'
The slab declares that Pelletier was born in Canada 1857, describing him as the 'zealous propagator' of the St. Anne Shrine, 'which he built and maintained himself.' Pelletier died and was buried at the site in March 7, 1942, the engraving says.
In reality, Pelletier's remains were interred at the site of the former church, now an adjacent private home, Rick Smith said. Pelletier's family eventually had his remains transported to Canada, he said, and the marker was moved to the grotto.
A moat, now dry, partly encircles the grotto. A footbridge crosses over the moat, constructed from pieces of coquina mortared together, as is the grotto itself. Circular tiles set into the bridge bear Pelletier's initials in blue (though the 'P' is shaped more like a 'D').
Under the grotto's covering, a small statue of the Virgin Mary occupies a curved niche, opposite a statue of a woman praying to her.
Even after the church was demolished, Easter services were held at the grotto for years, Smith said.
'On Easter Sunday, we had the sunrise service here, and we'd get about 100 to 150 people,' he said. 'You'd bring your lawn chair, and they would sit around there.'
Initially, a priest set up a folding table as an altar, until Smith and other members of the Knights of Columbus poured concrete to make a permanent altar. But the custom of holding masses at the grotto faded amid complaints from residents, Smith said.
On a recent day, the tile-lined altar platform held small religious figures and a collection of artificial flowers. Prayer candles stood on a ledge at the back of the grotto.
To the side of the grotto, a circular rock formation rises upward to hold a figure of St. Therese of Lisieux, known as 'Little Flower.' White tiles set into the concrete between the grotto and the ringed structure spell out the nickname.
While the rest of the land around the lake is now residential, the Diocese of Orlando still owns the grotto tract. Smith said that the ecclesiastical district does not maintain the site, so he and a pair of neighbors mow the grass and keep the altar area tidy. The diocese did not respond to a voicemail from The Ledger.
'We kind of put these two pieces of fence up,' Smith said. 'People used to drive right back here. And if there's anybody back here praying or meditating, we thought that they would not want to be interrupted.'
The St. Anne Shrine no longer draws religious pilgrims from Canada, but enough historical mystery remains to lure periodic visitors, Smith said.
'We've had busloads come up from Miami,' he said. 'This one bus had their youth group there; they were going on up to, I believe, Orlando. And they came up (State Road) 60 and stopped here at the shrine and had lunch.'
Gary White can be reached at [e-mail] or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Remnants hint at history of St. Anne Shrine near Lake Wales, Florida