Railroads also played a critical role in the area's post war recovery. In addition to supply delivery the rails were a boon to employment as rail beds, tracks, and depots need to be constructed. More importantly the placement of train stops literally foretold a settlement's future, whether it would flourish or wither.

Farmer and landowner Lawrence Arthur Wisenbaker understood the value of the railroad. So just as William Wisenbaker had provided land for a new county seat in 1859, Lawrence deeded railroad right-of-way in the 1880s to the Georgia Southern and Florida Railroad. Thus Lake Park's future was assured. A fringe benefit was the extra income earned by citizens who sold lumber to fuel the steam locomotives. Residents put wood in boxes along the track, while rail employees would empty the boxes and leave payments.

By 1890 the hamlet previously dubbed Twin Lakes officially became Lake Park. That same year the black population celebrated the newly built Francis Lake AME Baptist Church. A more modern church was built in 1899 on a new plot of land, its site today.

With the dawning of the fresh 20th Century Lake Park was humming. Industry included the Palmer Brothers' Turpentine Still and Ewell brown's Lake Park Manufacturing Company, which ginned cotton. Residents operated merchandise stores, a livery stable, law offices and a drug store. Peat moss was harvested from local wetlands and sold to horticultural interests. And a Lake Park Spanish Moss factory thrived as strands of the plentiful, silvery air plant became as popular as horsehair for stuffing upholstered furniture.

But "stuffy" certainly could not be used to describe the Lake Park Ocean Road Hunting and Fishing Club, established in 1903. So popular was the club that it remodeled in 1909 adding a dining room, and garnered a widespread reputation of serving the tastiest fried chicken anywhere. A 1913 bathhouse plus a dozen rooms later, and the club emerged as the trendy haunt of area young people, who scooted to an evening's entertainment in "new fangled" automobiles.

Other ventures were not as fortunate. Like much of the south in 1915, Lake Park agriculture depended heavily on cotton. But in 1915 the boll weevil struck, and the area's crop would not recover until the 1980s.