A timeline of Palm Beach County area history
Created by michquig on Mar 17, 2011
Last updated: 02/01/13 at 12:46 PM
Tags: Florida Palm Beach County history
On Dec. 14, 1914 the Woodlawn Cemetery Association deeded the cemetery to the city of West Palm Beach. Henry Flagler created the cemetery on 17 acres of pineapple fields in 1904. The original iron gate was removed in 1925 when Dixie Highway was widened. It was replaced with a concrete arch on which the inscription from the original gate — “That which is so universal as death must be a blessing” — was recreated. The origin of that inscription remains a mystery.
The back of this 1905 postcard reads “The main entrance to the beautiful Woodlawn Cemetery is guarded by a massive gate of iron, black with letters of bronze. The avenues are of that pure white splendor which is characteristic of all the roads in this vicinity.”
The 1925 Mediterranean Revival-style arch still stands at the entrance to Woodlawn Cemetery. (Augustus Mayhew/Palm Beach Daily News file photo)
Read more about the history of Woodlawn Cemetery at the Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County, and read more about the earlier Lakeside Cemetery here, where you can see photographs of the Pioneer Memorial Park historical marker and the two other memorials on the grounds of the Norton Museum of Art, across Dixie Highway from Woodlawn.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/12/this-week-in-history-woodlawn-cemetery-deede-to-city/
The Dec. 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack put a hold on plans to bring back the Palm Beach County Fair, which had been dormant since 1937. After a record-breaking year in 1929, the fair dwindled to nothing during the Depression, and was finally revived in 1946. The event was renamed the South Florida Fair in 1960 and will be celebrating its 100th year in 2012. Read more about the history of the fair here.
Click on the image to browse the March 10, 1929 Palm Beach Post.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/12/this-week-in-history-war-scuttles-plans-to-revive-county-fair/
On Nov. 30, 1955, the city of West Palm Beach sold a water bond issue to purchase the West Palm Beach Water Co. and its 17,000 acres of land for $8.5 million from the Henry Flagler estate. Flagler built the water plant at Clear Lake in 1894 when just a few hundred people lived in the area. By 1955 the water company served 15,700 households and businesses in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, and it currently provides water to 51,000 customers. Read more about the current state of the water facility here.
1919 “Map of the Property of the West Palm Beach Water Co.”
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-west-palm-beach-buys-water-plant/
Edward R. Murrow’s documentary exposing the plight of migrant farm workers in America aired Nov. 25, 1960, the day after Thanksgiving. Harvest of Shame began in Belle Glade and followed migrant workers across the country as they followed the harvest.
Nine-year-old Jerome King, shown here in a still from the video, appeared in the 1960 documentary Harvest of Shame. King, still living western Palm Beach County, talked to The Palm Beach Post in 2003. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-harvest-of-shame-airs-on-cbs/
President John F. Kennedy arrived at Palm Beach International Airport for the last time on Nov. 15, 1963 for a weekend trip that included a visit to Cape Canaveral.
Click on the images to browse the Nov. 16 and Nov. 18, 1963 pages of The Palm Beach Post.
After the president’s death Mrs. Kennedy carried on the family’s tradition of visiting Palm Beach for the Christmas holidays, arriving in Palm Beach on Dec. 18 with six-year-old Caroline and three-year-old John Jr.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-president-kennedy-spends-the-last-weekend-of-his-life-in-palm-beach/
Palm Beach County’s first shopping center opened on Nov. 12, 1959, on South Dixie Highway just north of the the West Palm Beach-Lake Worth line. The sign there still says Palm Coast Plaza, but the original Woolworth’s, Norman’s, G.C. Murphy, Reef Gifts, and S & S Cafeteria are no more.
In 1962 Palm Coast Plaza displayed a 55-foot color-changing Christmas tree in honor of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Palm Beach for the holiday.
A 1960s postcard of Palm Coast Plaza. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
Palm Beach Post file photo
Click on the ads above and below to browse 1961 and 1962 Palm Coast Plaza ads in The Palm Beach Post.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-palm-coast-plaza-opens-as-citys-first-shopping-mall/
On Nov. 5, 1894, 87 of the town’s 500 or so residents gathered at the calaboose — the building that housed the jail and town hall — at Poinsettia Avenue (now Dixie Highway) and Banyan Street and voted to incorporate West Palm Beach. The area had originally been called Westpalmbeach, a single word, then split into three words. Founders rejected the name Flagler, even though Henry Flagler provided much of the infrastructure for the fledgling town, including land and money for churches, public buildings, and fire equipment for the Flagler Alerts, the volunteer fire department.
In 1896, after the city was ravaged by three major storms and two fires – one caused by a drunken tailor who tipped over an oil lamp – numerologists blamed the fledgling city’s woes on its name; it contained 13 letters.
The calaboose also was the site of the meeting that incorporated Palm Beach County on July 1, 1909. (Photo by Theodore Pratt, courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
The Palm Beach Post published a historical supplement on the occasion of the city’s 55th birthday in 1949. Included are photos of the early days of West Palm Beach, memories from residents, and features about notable pioneers.
Click on the images below to browse the pages from the Nov. 6, 1949 issue of The Palm Beach Post. And thanks to Ginger Pedersen for bringing the 1949 historical supplement to our attention.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-west-palm-beach-incorporated/
On Nov. 5, 1894, 87 of the town’s 500 or so residents gathered at the calaboose — the building that housed the jail and town hall — at Poinsettia Avenue (now Dixie Highway) and Banyan Street and voted to incorporate West Palm Beach. The area had originally been called Westpalmbeach, a single word, then split into three words. Founders rejected the name Flagler, even though Henry Flagler provided much of the infrastructure for the fledgling town, including land and money for churches, public buildings, and fire equipment for the Flagler Alerts, the volunteer fire department.
In 1896, after the city was ravaged by three major storms and two fires – one caused by a drunken tailor who tipped over an oil lamp – numerologists blamed the fledgling city’s woes on its name; it contained 13 letters.
The calaboose also was the site of the meeting that incorporated Palm Beach County on July 1, 1909. (Photo by Theodore Pratt, courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
The Palm Beach Post published a historical supplement on the occasion of the city’s 55th birthday in 1949. Included are photos of the early days of West Palm Beach, memories from residents, and features about notable pioneers.
Click on the images below to browse the pages from the Nov. 6, 1949 issue of The Palm Beach Post. And thanks to Ginger Pedersen for bringing the 1949 historical supplement to our attention.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-west-palm-beach-incorporated/
On Oct. 28, 1908, Carl Kettler opened the Bijou Theatre in the Jefferson building on Clematis Street. The opening feature was The Great Train Robbery. Kettler later moved the Bijou to Clematis and Narcissus streets and replaced it in 1924 with a new building known as the Kettler Theater.
The Bijou Theatre just before it was demolished to make way for the new Kettler Theater in July 1923. (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)
Read more about the history of local theaters here.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-first-west-palm-beach-movie-theater-opens/
On Oct. 15, 1942, Boca Raton Army Air Field opened on 5,860-acres between Yamato and Palmetto Park Roads, from Military Trail to Dixie Highway. It was a flight and radar training base and home to some 16,000 troops. Boca Raton had fewer than 1,000 residents at the time.
The base was in operation until 1947. When ownership of the land was returned to the city and the state, part became Boca Raton Airport and the much of the rest eventually became Florida Atlantic University; the school’s unusually wide parking lots are former runways.
Read more about the Boca Raton Army Air Field at Palm Beach County History Online and in Small Town, Big Secrets: Inside the Boca Raton Army Airfield During World War II by Sally J. Ling
The Provost Marshal’s headquarters at the Boca Raton Army Air Field, around 1942. (Photo courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society)
Aerial view of the Boca Raton Army Air Field. (Photo courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society)
Col. N. L. Cote (front, center) escorts Maj. Gen. Walter R. Weaver (front, left) and others on a tour of the Boca Raton Army Air Field in this undated photo, circa 1940s. Historians have identified the building in the background as the Mizner Oaks Apartments. (Photo courtesy of Boca Raton Historical Society)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-boca-raton-army-air-field-opens/
The town of Delray was incorporated on Oct. 9th, 1911. In 1923, the town of Delray Beach, encompassing the barrier island east of the Intracoastal, was incorporated. Four years later, on May 11, 1927, the two towns united into the city of Delray Beach.
In 1973 The Palm Beach Post-Times ran a story featuring historic photos collected by the Delray Beach Historical Society. Reprints of vintage photographs are still available for purchase from the historical society archives.
The Cromer Building on the southwest corner of Atlantic Avenue and Fifth Avenue housed the Bank of Delray. It was the city’s first concrete structure. Bicycles and horse-drawn carriages were the main means of transportation when this shot was taken in the early 1900s. (Courtesy Delray Beach Historical Society)
Atlantic Avenue west of the railroad tracks in 1900. (Courtesy Delray Beach Historical Society)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-delray-beach-incorporated/
The town of Delray was incorporated on Oct. 9th, 1911. In 1923, the town of Delray Beach, encompassing the barrier island east of the Intracoastal, was incorporated. Four years later, on May 11, 1927, the two towns united into the city of Delray Beach.
In 1973 The Palm Beach Post-Times ran a story featuring historic photos collected by the Delray Beach Historical Society. Reprints of vintage photographs are still available for purchase from the historical society archives.
The Cromer Building on the southwest corner of Atlantic Avenue and Fifth Avenue housed the Bank of Delray. It was the city’s first concrete structure. Bicycles and horse-drawn carriages were the main means of transportation when this shot was taken in the early 1900s. (Courtesy Delray Beach Historical Society)
Atlantic Avenue west of the railroad tracks in 1900. (Courtesy Delray Beach Historical Society)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-delray-beach-incorporated/
On Oct. 4, 1982, Delray Community Hospital (renamed Delray Medical Center in 1996) admitted its first patients. The hospital opened with 160 beds and has since expanded to become a 493-bed acute care hospital on a 42-acre medical center campus.
Delray Community Hospital was under construction when this photo was taken in July 1982. (Palm Beach Post file photo)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-delray-medical-center-opens/
On Sept. 30, 1969, the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge was established after Joseph Verner Reed donated 229 acres of Jupiter Island land to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge grew to its current size of more than 1,000 acres through donations of land on the island and along the Indian River Lagoon.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/09/this-week-in-history-jupiter-island-residents-donate-land-for-wildlife-refuge/
On Sept. 20, 1929, the first airport in the Palm Beach area was officially recognized when the federal government approved a beacon and landing marker for Lightbown Municipal Airport. The airport, named for Palm Beach Mayor Cooper Lightbown, was established by the Greater Palm Beach Airport Association and the Junior Chamber of Commerce on a 440-acre tract on Belvedere Road. In 1936 the airport we now know as Palm Beach International began commercial service and was renamed Morrison Field.
This photo of a Ford tri-motor passenger plane was taken in 1929. From Post Time reader James P. Sikes who submitted the photo: The plane was the “747 of its day. Note the huge wingspan. The event was a plane ride over West Palm Beach for the employees of the West Palm Beach Water Co., shown standing with the plane along with company trucks prior to take-off in West Palm Beach. My father is the man in the middle back row, wearing the bow tie. His name, James Sikes.”
Coincidentally, Charles Lindbergh flew over West Palm Beach on his way to Miami the day before Lightbown Municipal Airport got its federal certification,
The Palm Beach Post story says “Col. and Mrs. Lindbergh passed over West Palm Beach at 12:52 Thursday afternoon, flying very high, and somewhat west of the city. His plane was moving at a rapid rate of speed.”
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/09/this-week-in-history-first-palm-beach-county-airport-approved/
Delray Beach will mark its centennial Oct. 9, the official incorporation date. Look for plenty of fun events next month.
A meeting “for the purpose of discussing the advisability of incorporating” occurred a century ago, Sept. 4, 1911. It was at the Ladies Improvement Association Hall in what then was the settlement of Linton.
A month later, on Oct. 9, 57 “qualified electors” voted almost unanimously — one ballot was tossed — to create the new municipality of “Delray,” west of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Maj. Nathan Smith Boynton, U.S. Congressman William Seelyn Linton and David Swinton had come from Michigan in 1895.
Boynton was a retired Civil War major and former mayor of Port Huron, Mich.; Linton, postmaster of Saginaw, Mich., and a congressman; and Swinton, a Saginaw bookstore owner.
In West Palm Beach, they heard of land for sale to the south. By 1895, Linton had brought down 10 settlers. After they were hit by a freeze and Linton defaulted on land payments, settlers decided Linton reminded them of struggle and chose a different namesake.
Delray was a neighborhood in Detroit that was itself named for the Mexican town of Del Rey, translated as “of the king.” At the October 1911 meeting, John S. Sundy (pictured above) was elected mayor with 53 votes. He served seven terms.
A construction superintendent for the Florida East Coast Railway, he had stepped off a southbound train in 1898. When Henry Flagler told him, “There’s nothing here,” he replied, “There will be.”
Also at the incorporation meeting was George H. Green (pictured above), one of 10 people nominated for five aldermen’s positions, coming in seventh. Notable about that was that Green was black, in Florida, where in the early 20th century, few blacks even were allowed to vote. In fact, 11 of Delray’s 57 electors were African-American.
In 1923, the town of Delray Beach, encompassing residents on the barrier island east of the Intracoastal, was incorporated. Four years later, on May 11, 1927, the two towns merged.
The Delray Beach centennial web page is delray100.com.
Read the minutes of Delray Beach’s incorporation meeting here.
Miller and Son’s First Bicycle and Barber Shop in Delray, circa 1912. Left to right: two unknown customers, Albert L. Miller, Mary (Clutter) Miller and Albert F. Miller. The photo was taken near the location of the old Arcade Tap Room, now Gol! The Taste of Brazil on Atlantic Avenue. (Photo courtesy of Delray Beach Historical Society)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/eliot-kleinberg/2011/09/first-delray-meeting-100-years-ago-sept-4/
When the village of North Palm Beach incorporated on Aug. 13, 1956, it already had an illustrious history. Harry Kelsey bought thousands of acres of land in the area that’s now North Palm Beach and Lake Park in the 1920s, and American-born British Canadian gold-mine owner, entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist Sir Harry Oakes purchased much of that land from Kelsey in the 1930s. Oakes’ 1943 murder was never solved.
Harry Kelsey and Paris Singer spent $500,000 to build the Palm Beach Winter Club and 18-hole golf course in 1926. In the 1930s Harry Oakes added on the building and used it as one of his winter homes. It later became the North Palm Beach Country Club. The building was razed in 1984. (Photo courtesy of the Lake Park Historical Society)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/08/this-week-in-history-north-palm-beach-incorporated/
On July 20, 1921, when the town incorporated, J.H. Vance was elected mayor, but he changed his mind right after the election (or discovered he lived outside the town limits, according to one source) and never took office. The town appointed Ellen M. Anderson as the first woman mayor in Palm Beach County. Anderson led the town for two years, followed by Mary S. Paddock, who served until 1924.
When Lantana was incorporated in 1921, it contained one square mile and a hundred residents. Twenty-two people voted in the first election, according to Mary Linehan’s Early Lantana, Her Neighbors and More.
Lantana’s town hall in 1961.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/07/this-week-in-history-lantana-incorporated/
1915 was a big year for Okeechobee. Much of the town’s commercial district was built that year, including the L. M. Raulerson Department Store and the adjoining Darrow building. A Florida East Coast spur extended to the city, allowing cattlemen to move herds quickly to market and opening up the fishing and timber industries. And on July 13, 1915, the city was incorporated.
According to History of Okeechobee County by Kyle S. VanLandingham and Alma Hetherington, the November 1916 Florida Farmer and Homeseeker reported this:
Okeechobee is a new town which has sprung up in the past two years as if by magic, and is now attracting attention as a fruit growing, truck and general farming section of South Florida, as well as having an abundance of cypress and pine timber of first growth, naturally of large size and best quality. It is also the port of entry for the enormous fish industry on Lake Okeechobee. Over its Onoshohatchee River [Taylor Creek] is carried a freight and fishing business which totals over $1,500,000 in a year.
Undated Palm Beach Post file photo of the Raulerson Building at SW 5th Avenue and Park Street in downtown Okeechobee.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/07/this-week-in-history-okeechobee-incorporated/
The town of Lake Clarke Shores was incorporated on July 4, 1957, reportedly to avoid annexation by West Palm Beach. The lake had been named decades earlier, for John S. Clarke, a Pennsylvania businessman and the son of Palm Beach pioneer Charles John Clarke.
In the 1890s in Palm Beach, men fished for sharks with rope, large bait and a gun for safety once the shark was hauled to shore. Among the men pictured is gun-toting John Clarke, one of Palm Beach’s early pioneers. Clarke’s niece was Winifred Clarke Anthony, a part-time Palm Beach resident during her childhood and then a full-time resident and charity activist from 1929 until her death at age 95 in 1988, when she lived in the eight-room Cape Cod-style home her father built in 1902. Her father, Louis Semple Clarke, the inventor of the first gear-driven automobile, among other things, took this photo after helping to catch the mammoth fish. In 1911, on the porch of the Clarke family’s Palm Beach home, the town’s charter was signed. (Palm Beach Daily News file photo)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/07/this-week-in-history-lake-clarke-shores-incorporated/
On June 14, 1913, the city of Lake Worth was incorporated as the fourth city in Palm Beach County, after West Palm Beach, Palm Beach and Delray Beach. The area had been known as Jewell (or Jewel) in the 1890s, and in 1912 it was platted as the Townsite of Lucerne. But another town had already claimed the name Lucerne, so the city became Lake Worth.
Lake Worth pioneer and historian Lillian Curry (right) in 1913, age 4 or 5, with her family in the tent on Second Avenue North where they lived when they moved to Lake Worth. A year later, electric lights were introduced. Curry died in 2000 at age 92. (Palm Beach Post file photo, courtesy of Sandy Capton, Lillian Curry’s great-niece.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/06/this-week-in-history-lake-worth-incorporated/
On May 30, 1957, the tiny Village of Golf, straddling Golf Road between Congress Avenue and Military Trail near Boynton Beach, was incorporated. The village was one of four Palm Beach County municipalities created that year: Tequesta in June, Palm Springs and Lake Clarke Shores in July. About 280 people live in the 542-acre village.
1953 aerial photo showing the area that would become the Village of Golf four years later. Map courtesy of the University of Florida Map & Digital Imagery Library.
2011 satellite map view of the area, courtesy of Google Maps.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/05/this-week-in-history-village-of-golf-incorporated/
On May 6, 1961, residents of St. Lucie Village, a neighborhood with homes dating back to the 1870s, incorporated it as a town so their zoning rules could block construction of a steel mill north of Fort Pierce along the Indian River Lagoon. It worked, and Florida Steel’s plant was built in Indiantown instead.
The Russell-Padrick house on N. Indian River Drive in St. Lucie Village was built around 1875 from lumber cut on the property. (1987 photo courtesy of Milt Putnam)
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/05/this-week-in-history-st-lucie-village-incorporated/
Voters in the 90-year-old rural community of Loxahatchee Groves approved incorporation by a vote of 458 to 350 to become the Town of Loxahatchee Groves on Oct. 10, 2006. Founded in 1917, Loxahatchee Groves is the oldest of the western communities. The area is made up of 7,867 acres and gets its name from both an Indian dialect translation meaning “turtle creek” and the acres of citrus groves that occupied the land prior to settlement.
http://www.loxahatcheegroves.org/index.php?go=pages.page&pageId=2
The former Palm Beach High reopened on Aug. 20, 1997, after a $29.5 million renovation, as the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts. The first school on the site had opened in 1908, replacing a four-room schoolhouse at Clematis and Dixie. Parents at the time worried about sending their children so far out of town into the wilderness. A new high school building opened in 1915, a third building opened in 1922, and a fourth in 1927. In 1970 the school changed its name to Twin Lakes, which closed in June 1988. It briefly operated as Palm Beach Lakes High until that school’s new campus opened in 1989, then remained vacant until 1997.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/08/this-week-in-history-dreyfoos-school-of-the-arts-opens/
Edgar Winter, Survivor and Bachman-Turner Overdrive performed for the intentionally low-key opening of the Sony Music/Blockbuster Coral Sky Amphitheatre. The amphitheater, originally named for the sunset-sky view from the west-facing seats, was later known as the MARS Music and then Sound Advice Amphitheatre, and has been the Cruzan Amphitheatre since 2008. Other opening season acts included Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Doobie Brothers, Ozzy Osbourne, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/04/this-week-in-history-coral-sky-amphitheatre-opens/
On Dec. 31, 1995, Wellington became a village. Wellington got its name from Charles Oliver Wellington, a wealthy New York accountant who bought property in the area that came to be known as the Flying Cow Ranch. The land was sold to developers in the 1970s. A 1974 ad for land in Wellington offered single family home sites for $7,800, “light years away from the Gold Coast’s congestion, yet just minutes from its glitter.”
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/12/this-week-in-history-wellington-incorporates-as-palm-beach-countys-38th-municipality/
On March 9, 1991, the restored 1926 gymnasium at the Old School Square Cultural Arts Center made its debut with a 1950s-themed prom. The opening of the gymnasium marked the halfway point of the restoration of the four-acre site. The 1913 Delray Elementary building reopened in 1990 as the Cornell Museum of Art and American Culture, and the Crest Theatre in the former Delray High School opened in 1993.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/03/delrays-old-school-square-restored-to-its-former-glory/
On April 5, 1988, T.C. Bumper’s, the last remaining drive-in restaurant in Palm Beach County, closed after 32 years. The drive-in, at Southern Boulevard and Parker Avenue, had been an A&W in its early days and still served frosty mugs of root beer as T.C. Bumper’s.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/04/this-week-in-history-the-end-of-a-restaurant-era/
On Oct. 4, 1982, Delray Community Hospital (renamed Delray Medical Center in 1996) admitted its first patients. The hospital opened with 160 beds and has since expanded to become a 493-bed acute care hospital on a 42-acre medical center campus.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/10/this-week-in-history-delray-medical-center-opens/
On March 25, 1982, Eva Williams Mack was elected the first black mayor of West Palm Beach in a unanimous vote by the city commission. Mack came to West Palm Beach in 1948 and worked as a public health nurse and as the first health specialist for the county’s school board before she and Ruby Bullock became the city’s first black commissioners in 1978. Mack died in 1998.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/03/this-week-in-history-eva-mack-becomes-west-palm-beachs-first-black-mayor/
On Sept. 12, 1980, a chartered commuter plane on a gambling junket from West Palm Beach to Freeport, Grand Bahama, crashed into the ocean, killing all 34 aboard in the worst air disaster on a flight into or out of Palm Beach International Airport.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/09/this-week-in-history-west-palm-beach-flight-to-bahamas-crashes-killing-34/
On March 28, 1978, after West Palm Beach converted to electing commissioners by district rather than at-large, Eva Mack and Ruby L. Bullock were the first blacks elected to the city commission. Helen Wilkes was elected the first woman mayor.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/03/this-week-in-history-first-blacks-elected-to-west-palm-beach-commission-and-first-woman-mayor/
On Jan. 6, 1978, John Donald MacArthur, the legendary rags-to-riches billionaire who made his fortune in insurance, bought much of the undeveloped land in northern Palm Beach County and southern Martin County, and founded the city of Palm Beach Gardens, died. He left his fortune to a foundation for charitable causes, scientific research and the arts
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/01/this-week-in-history-john-d-macarthur-dies/
On Jan. 19 1977 the first-ever recorded snow fell in Palm Beach County. Most of it melted on impact, but accumulations of up to a quarter-inch were reported in sheltered areas from Jupiter to Delray.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/01/this-week-in-history-snow-falls-on-palm-beach-county/
On July 3, 1976, Interstate 95 from Miami to Palm Beach Gardens was opened. The first part of I-95 in Palm Beach County was built in 1966, a 3.6-mile stretch from Okeechobee Boulevard to 45th Street in West Palm Beach, followed by the segment reaching north to Palm Beach Gardens in 1969, and then portions between Lake Worth and Hypoluxo and from Miami to Boynton Beach in 1975. It wasn’t until 1987 that the “missing link” between Palm Beach Gardens and Fort Pierce was completed.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/06/this-week-in-history-interstate-95-grows/
On July 19, 1971, the National Enquirer moved its 57 employees and their families from Englewood Cliffs, N.J., to Lantana to “be free of metropolitan New York’s many problems.” The Enquirer hosted a lavish Christmas display at its Lantana location until the 1988 death of owner Generoso Pope. The tabloid moved its offices to Boca Raton in 2000.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/07/this-week-in-history-the-national-enquirer-moves-to-lantana/
On May 4, 1970, Palm Beach Post photographer Dallas Kinney was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for his photographs of the poverty and poor working conditions of farm workers in the Glades in the Migration to Misery series. Later that month the Florida legislature passed a bill creating a state migrant labor commission.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/05/this-week-in-history-the-palm-beach-post-wins-a-pulitzer/
On Nov. 28, 1969, the three-day Palm Beach International Music and Arts Festival attracted 40,000 people to the Palm Beach International Speedway northwest of West Palm Beach. Freezing rain turned the site into a muddy quagmire the first day, but the sun came out before Janis Joplin’s performance the next day. The Rolling Stones closed the festival, coming on stage near dawn on the 30th.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/11/this-week-in-history-palm-beach-countys-own-woodstock/
On Sept. 30, 1969, the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge was established after Joseph Verner Reed donated 229 acres of Jupiter Island land to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge grew to its current size of more than 1,000 acres through donations of land on the island and along the Indian River Lagoon.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/09/this-week-in-history-jupiter-island-residents-donate-land-for-wildlife-refuge/
IBM began producing small mainframe computers in leased office space in Boca Raton in September 1967. Three years later the company opened a multimillion dollar plant on 550 acres in western Boca Raton, just north of what was then the city of University Park and south of the FAU campus. Don Estridge led the team that created the first personal computer there in 1981. One of the early IBM buildings now houses Don Estridge High Tech Middle School. At its peak IBM employed 9,500 in Boca Raton, but eventually, low-priced competitors forced work force reductions and in 1988, IBM moved its PC assembly lines to North Carolina.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/08/this-week-in-history-ibm-comes-to-boca-raton/
The September 3, 1967, dedication of the West Palm Beach Auditorium kicked off a week of free shows featuring country, rock and roll, and ice skating performers. Afternoon thunderstorms on opening day didn’t interfere with the dedication show, but the auditorium will be remembered by many as the “leaky teepee” for the cone-shaped roof that couldn’t keep all the rain out.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/08/this-week-in-history-west-palm-beach-auditorium-opens/
On August 20, 1967, dozens of lions arrived at their new home twenty miles west of West Palm Beach. Lion Country Safari, “the only African safari west of the Atlantic,” was developed by a group of South African and British entrepreneurs who wanted to bring the African game park experience to families. Today the wildlife park is home to more than 900 animals in a four-mile drive-through preserve.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/08/this-week-in-history-lion-country-safari-opens/
The 1962 poisoning deaths of two Boca Raton children — Debra Ann Drummond, 9, and her brother James Randall Drummond, 3, who died en route to Bethesda Hospital in Boynton Beach — spurred the community to raise money for its own hospital. One of every three city residents is said to have contributed to the Debbie-Rand Foundation that funded the hospital. The hospital opened on July 15, 1967.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/07/this-week-in-history-boca-raton-community-hospital-opens/
On Nov. 23, 1965, thieves cleaned out much of the Norton’s jade collection, a haul worth about $1 million. All but three of the 100 pieces were recovered three months later in a Broward County garage. The theft was thought to have been tied to other major crimes in south Florida. The museum, now known as the Norton Museum of Art, still owns the jades it acquired in 1942 from the collection of Stanley Charles Nott.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/11/this-week-in-history-jade-collection-stolen-from-norton-art-gallery/
President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the dedication address at the new Florida Atlantic University. It was the first time a U.S. president visited Boca Raton.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/10/this-week-in-history-lbj-speaks-at-fau-dedication/
Hurricane Cleo was the first major hurricane to hit Palm Beach County since 1949. The Category 2 storm made landfall at Miami and left a path of destruction up to Melbourne. Damage was relatively minor, but widespread — power outages, broken glass, downed trees and overturned trailers. The Palm Beach Times was unable to publish for the first time since the 1949 hurricane.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2010/08/this-week-in-history-hurricane-cleo-churns-up-the-coast/
President John F. Kennedy arrived at Palm Beach International Airport for the last time on Nov. 15, 1963 for a weekend trip that included a visit to Cape Canaveral.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-president-kennedy-spends-the-last-weekend-of-his-life-in-palm-beach/
President John F. Kennedy arrived at Palm Beach International Airport for the last time on Nov. 15, 1963 for a weekend trip that included a visit to Cape Canaveral.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/flashback/2011/11/this-week-in-history-president-kennedy-spends-the-last-weekend-of-his-life-in-palm-beach/
Developers came up with the exotic name to play off the adjacent ocean. When the mobile home park was incorporated as a town in 1963, the name was retained.
http://www.historicpalmbeach.com/eliot-kleinberg/2006/08/locals-gave-hypoluxo-its-name/
Update Sources