06/12/2025
The Homes and History of the Lake Allen Neighborhood Group
You won’t find a community pool or playground, nor is there a golf course or club house, but the residents of the Lake Allen Neighborhood Group will still argue that there’s no better place to live. Free from the rules and regulations of a homeowner’s association, this neighborhood has gradually formed over the last 109 years around the group’s singular greatest amenity, a lake.
There are 38 lakefront homes located around the shores of Lake Allen. The 39th home (located on Lake Allen Road) started construction in 2024, and a planned 40th home (on Lutz Lake Fern Road) is slated to start later this year in 2025. There are just two more vacant waterfront residential home site properties remaining on Lake Allen before it’s completely built out to 42 homes. (There are no plans to parcel out the 80-Acre Lund Family Tract in the northwest quadrant of the lake). The 42 lakefront home sites that are accessible from Lake Allen Road, Lutz Lake Fern Road, and from Goldie Lane constitute what is known as the Lake Allen Neighborhood Group as identified by Hillsborough County and by most internet map web sites.
According to records from the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s Website, the oldest home currently on the lake belongs to Tom and Maureen Volpe. Although significantly updated and remodeled over the years, their home at 2807 Lutz Lake Fern Road was originally constructed in 1952. It is one of eight homes built on the shores of Lake Allen that date back to the 1950’s. While the Volpe residence is the oldest home currently on Lake Allen, it was not the first home to be constructed here.
Evidence of the very first structure built on or around Lake Allen comes from a 1916 Map which shows a structure (identified by a black square) located near the southeast corner of Lake Allen. The structure was located on the north side of present-day Lutz Lake Fern Road (Vernon Road at the time) and comes just two years after the 1914 abandonment of the Tampa & Gulf Coast Railroad tracks from Odessa to Lutz Junction which provided the elevated bedding and pathway for the road. It was also prior to the draining of Lake Bloxham and the creation of the present-day Lake Allen shoreline.
While the map is not detailed enough to positively identify the first home owner on Lake Allen, comparison with a 1916 Land Atlas (the same year) shows that H.L. Gould privately owned 20 Acres in the northeast corner of Section 10 at the time, and that the rest of the Lake Bloxham shoreline was still owned by either the Aripeka Saw Mills (Section 3) or the North Tampa Land Company (Section 10).
Comparing the 1916 Map and the Land Atlas side by side, it’s likely that H.L. Gould was the very first person to build a structure on Lake Allen, and that it was very near or at the present-day intersection of Lake Allen Road and Lutz Lake Fern Road. His structure (home or farm) does not appear on any future maps and may not have survived the October 25, 1921 Tampa Bay Hurricane (also known as the Tarpon Springs Hurricane) which destroyed the original Lutz Schoolhouse and decimated the entire area.
The need to relieve overland flooding from the 1921 Hurricane may have been a catalyst for the draining of Lake Bloxham (and the subsequent creation of individual shorelines for Lakes Allen, Virginia, Harvey, and Joy) which first appeared on area maps beginning in 1923.
With the region’s vast timber supplies dwindling, lowering the water levels would have improved access for sawmills to harvest the remaining timber around the lakes, and it would have increased the quantity of upland acreage which could then be sold off for agricultural purposes.
