History of Palm Beach County, Florida
During the 1890s, Henry Flagler and his workers constructed the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers in Palm Beach and extended the Florida East Coast Railway southward to the area.
The close results of that year's presidential election in Florida and Palm Beach County's "butterfly ballot" led to a recount and controversial decision by the United States Supreme Court.
[1] In 1513, Juan Ponce de León, who led a European expedition to Florida earlier that year, became the first non-Native American to reach Palm Beach County, after landing in the modern-day Jupiter area.
[8] Dickinson published a journal in 1699 detailing the ordeal and later served in several political offices including mayor of Philadelphia from 1712–1713 and 1717–1719 and speaker of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly in 1718 and 1719.
To aid the cause of their state, Augustus O. Lang and James Paine removed the lighting mechanism, dimming the lighthouse and assisting their blockade runners.
[22] Carriers would deliver mail by foot or boat from Palm Beach and other nearby communities to as far south as Miami, a round trip distance of 136 mi (219 km).
[23] Also in 1885, Fannie and Samuel James, both African-American, became the first settlers at the future site of the city of Lake Worth, though this area would originally be called Jewell after the post office founded there in 1889.
[27] On Lake Worth's eastern shore, the Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach opened for business in February 1894, constructed by Flagler to accommodate wealthy tourists.
[27] In the following year, 1896, devastation from two large fires in downtown West Palm Beach resulted in building codes being updated to require brick structures.
The Everglades Drainage District, formed by the Florida state government in 1907, sold large tracts of land in western Palm Beach County between 1908 and 1910.
[65]: 5 Farther inland, wind-driven storm surge in Lake Okeechobee inundated adjacent communities, particularly Belle Glade, Pahokee, and South Bay.
[69] As a result of both the 1926 and 1928 hurricanes, Palm Beach County and the rest of South Florida began suffering economic turmoil, pushing the region into the Great Depression, even before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
[70] Also in 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed into law the Rivers and Harbors Act, authorizing the construction of a dike at Lake Okeechobee in an effort to mitigate a disaster similar to the hurricanes in 1926 and 1928.
Compromising more than 800 buildings and 4 runways, the airfield at its peak accommodated more than 100,000 personnel trained there or flew to destinations in Europe or the Pacific Ocean, dwarfing Boca Raton's population of 723 in the 1940 census.
[86] Following the conclusion of World War II, a number of veterans returned to the area for work, vacation, or retirement,[78] a trend that continued into the 21st century.
[46][88] Unusually heavy rainfall and a series of tropical cyclones in 1947, culminating with the Cape Sable hurricane, led to a major flood disaster in South Florida.
Approximately 90 percent of eastern Florida south of Orlando was flooded, while about 7,812.5 sq mi (20,234 km2) of land was inundated with water ranging from at least 6 in (150 mm) to up to 10 ft (3.0 m) above ground.
West Palm Beach would also extend its boundaries southward towards Lake Clarke Shores and westward markedly, beyond Military Trail, after Lou Perini and a team of engineers transformed thousands of acres of wetlands into land suitable for commercial and residential development.
Owners John P. and Lillian Pedersen added more than 55,000 plants for beautification of the landscape and constructed miles of canals and lakes and artificial features such as geysers and waterfalls.
West Palm Beach municipal judge Joseph Peel, Jr. and hitmen George "Bobby" Lincoln and Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel were all convicted six years later on charges stemming from the murders.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, who participated in the dedication ceremony, and Florida governor C. Farris Bryant, instrumental in acquiring funds for the university, would both be the first recipients of honorary doctorates from FAU.
[123] The downtown section of West Palm Beach in particular gained a reputation for crime (highest rate for a city of its size in the 1980s), poverty, and vacant and dilapidated businesses and houses.
Senator Lawton Chiles referred to the area as a "war zone", while West Palm Beach was the setting for the documentary film Crack USA: County Under Siege.
[120] The large, multi-day arts and music festival in downtown West Palm Beach known as SunFest began in 1983, though organizers netted a loss of about $120,000 in the first year.
[138] As part of the effort to revitalize downtown Boca Raton, Mizner Park – "one of the first, and most popular, of Palm Beach County's iconic outdoor shopping and entertainment complexes", according to journalist Eliot Kleinberg – opened on January 11, 1991.
[135] On November 7 of that year, residents voted by a small margin to establish the village of Wellington,[147] the first new municipality in Palm Beach County since Briny Breezes was incorporated in 1963.
[148] The West Palm Beach city commission voted that year to approve the development of CityPlace at the site of the failed Downtown/Uptown project as another attempt to revitalize the downtown area.
[169][170] In August 2012, heavy rainfall from the outer bands of Hurricane Isaac caused flooding that left neighborhoods in The Acreage, Loxahatchee, Royal Palm Beach, and Wellington isolated for several days.
[175] The circumstances leading up to the fatal shooting of Corey Jones by Palm Beach Gardens police officer Nouman K. Raja on October 18, 2015, gained national attention as part of the broader Black Lives Matter movement.
Raja was found guilty on March 7, 2019, of the charges of manslaughter by culpable negligence and attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, for which he received a prison sentence of 25 years.
