Browsing Category »Our History
March 7th ,
2010 →
7:55 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
On April 8, 1929, the Garden Club of Palm Beach met with the Town Council and formally offered to sponsor the preparation of a Town Plan. This was known as the “1929 Plan of Palm Beach.” The offer was accepted. Arrangements were made with a consulting firm and the plans were put in place. 
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Historic Documents / Our History
February 24th ,
2010 →
11:38 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
About the Town of Palm Beach
Palm Beach is a barrier island sixteen miles long located 65 miles north of Miami. To the east is the Atlantic Ocean and to the west is the Intracoastal Waterway, which separates Palm Beach from the cities of West Palm Beach and Lake Worth. The year-round population is 10,000 and the seasonal population is about 30,000. Palm Beach is the land area closest to the Gulf Stream which produces lush gardens, palm lined beaches, and an outstanding marine environment. The Town of Palm Beach provides a full range of municipal services including Police and Fire-Rescue protection, sanitation, recreation, street and road maintenance, planning, zoning and building and general administrative services. The Town employs approximately 434 full and part time employees.
Palm Beach is a fully developed community, world-renowned for its extraordinary beauty, quality of life and small-town character. As we envision our future ten years from now, we see Palm Beach remaining true to the inspired legacy of our founders, a Mediterranean-style mecca of stunning architecture and natural beauty, acclaimed shopping, restaurants and hotels, a cosmopolitan culture, and an involved citizenry committed to civic and philanthropic causes and excellence in Town government. Our vision for the next decade and beyond consists of continuing to focus on our top-notch public safety departments of Police and Fire-Rescue; sustaining a quality of life by protecting existing open spaces and managing redevelopment both in residential and commercial districts; improving emergency management measures in preparation for a possible disaster; continuing to improve the island’s infrastructure by renourishing its beaches, improving storm drainage and ensuring the integrity of our roads; and maintaining our excellent financial health.
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About the Town Of Palm Beach / Our History
February 23rd ,
2010 →
11:41 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
Current Officials
Senior Management Team
Peter B. Elwell, Town Manager
Thomas G. Bradford, Deputy Town Manager
Jay Boodheshwar, Recreation Director
H. Paul Brazil, Public Works Director
Danielle Olson, Human Resources Director
John Page, Planning, Zoning and Building Director
Kirk Blouin, Police Chief
Jane Struder, Finance Director
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Our History / Town Officials
February 23rd ,
2010 →
11:20 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
“Cap” E.N. Dimick – Town of Palm Beach’s First Mayor
Cap Dimick’s family came to Palm Beach in 1876 and grew sweet potatoes, pumpkins and pineapples. In 1880, Dimick added eight rooms to his home and opened the island’s first hotel, the Cocoanut Grove House. By 1899, Cap owned 136 acres of Palm Beach, then just a patch of jungle and swamp from lake to ocean. He built a wooden bridge himself in 1911 and called it the Royal Park Bridge, for his Palm Beach development project, the Royal Park Addition. He charged a quarter per car and a nickel per pedestrian.
Elisha Newton Dimick got his nickname “Cap” for the white hats he liked to wear.
Elisha Newton "Cap" Dimick
Dimick probably would never be a finalist in a spelling bee. In his neighborhood plat, he spelled Chilean as Chilian for Chilian Avenue, and it’s still spelled that way.
In 1919, Palm Beach County bought Dimick’s bridge for $40,000, intending to replace it with a concrete span. But two days before the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 1921, four arches of the new bridge collapsed into the water. The span was rebuilt, and a sixth incarnation of the bridge, the northernmost of the three that connect West Palm Beach and Palm Beach, is set to be completed in 2002.
On April 17, 1911, Cap and Louis Semple Clarke gathered 31 male property owners on the steps of the Clarke home, where they signed the charter incorporating the community. Cap became Palm Beach’s first mayor. He had already been a state representative in 1890 and state senator in 1896, and he helped start the region’s first bank, the Dade County State Bank.
His grandson, Claude Dimick Reese, served 56 years in Palm Beach government, 18 as mayor and 38 as a council member. He died at 87 in 1984.
Today, a statue of Cap Dimick, holding his cap, stands on Royal Palm Way and welcomes visitors to Palm Beach.
Historical Society of Palm Beach County: 832-4164
Courtesy of Eliot Kleinberg
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Our History
February 18th ,
2010 →
9:59 am
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Palm Beach Centennial
Mayors
1911 – 1917 ———“Cap” E.N. Dimick
1918 – 1918———-T.T. “Tip” Reese
1919 – 1921———-George W. Jonas
1922 – 1927 ———Cooper C. Lightbown
1928 – 1929 ———Barclay H. Warburton
1930 – 1934 ——- -John Shepard, Jr.
1945 – 1952 ——– James M. Owens, Jr.
1953 – 1970———Claude D. Reese
1971 – 1976———Earl E.T. Smith
1977 – 1978——– William B. Cudahy
1979 – 1982———Mack L. Ritchie
1983 – 1992———Yvelyne de Marcellus Marix
1993 – 1999 ——–Paul R. Ilyinsky
2000 - 2004 ——- Lesly S. Smith
2005 – 2010 —–Jack McDonald
2011 – present —–Gail Coniglio
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Mayors / Our History
January 8th ,
2010 →
10:31 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
Here is a historical timeline of Palm Beach with some significant points in South Florida history. If you have anything to add please let us know.
1513 – Juan Ponce de Leon claims Florida for Spain
1565 – St. Augustine is founded (under Spanish rule)
1696 – Jonathan Dickinson shipwrecked near Jupiter Island.
1763 – Feb. 10th Spain trades Florida to England for Cuba
1783 – England returns Florida to Spain for Bahamas
1795 – Spain establishes Florida’s current boundaries
1818 – First Seminole War occurs
1821 – Feb. 22 – Spain sells Florida to U.S. for $5 million.
1824 – Mosquito County established; includes area of PBC.
1830 – First census has population of S. Florida at 517 pp
1835 – 1842 – Second Seminole War
1845 – Florida admitted to the Union as 27th State.
1853 – 1856 – Third Seminole War
1861 – Florida secedes from U.S., joins Confederacy
1878 – The Providencia wrecks off the coast full of 20,000 coconuts – they were distributed and planted
1885 – 1893 – 11 barefoot mailmen carried mail the 136 miles between Palm Beach and Cape Florida.
1889 – First rail line in South Florida (the Celestial Railroad) born on July 4th
1893 – Henry Flagler, Standard Oil Tycoon, declares Palm Beach a “veritable paradise”.
1894 – Flagler’s Royal Poinciana Hotel is completed. It is the largest wooden structure in the world.
1894 – Flagler’s railroad, FEC Railway arrives
1896 – Flagler opens the Palm Beach Inn which becomes the Breakers in 1901.
1907 – Telephone service established with 18 phones
1911 – Palm Beach incorporated
1913 – Henry Flagler dies in Palm Beach
1925 – First regular steamship at the Port of Palm Beach
1938 – Flagler Memorial Bridge opens
1959 – Royal Palm Bridge to Palm Beach opens
1976 – I-95 is completed from Miami to Palm Beach Gardens
1977 – First snow ever recorded
2011 – Town of Palm Beach Turns 100
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Time Line
January 1st ,
2010 →
4:27 pm
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Palm Beach Centennial
Who was Henry Morrison Flagler?
Henry Flagler literally invented modern Florida. And nowhere is Flagler’s legacy more evident than in Palm Beach County.
At a time in life when the average man of the late 19th century had reached the end of his life expectancy, Flagler decided to step back from the day-to-day responsibilities of Standard Oil, the company he co-founded. Had he not accomplished another thing for the rest of his life, he certainly would be remembered for his role in what would remain for a century the largest and most profitable corporation in the world. But instead of retiring, Flagler devoted all of his considerable resources and creativity to building Florida.
From St. Augustine to Miami, Henry Flagler built a series of luxury hotels that quickly established tourism as a mainstay of Florida’s economy. His Florida East Coast Railway not only connected his hotels but opened the state to growth of all kinds. Through his Model Land Company, Flagler encouraged the agricultural development of
millions of acres, thus establishing agriculture as another mainstay of the state’s economy. Not content with those accomplishments, Flagler undertook and accomplished the most ambitious engineering feat ever attempted by a private citizen, the building of the Over-Sea Railroad, covering more than 155 miles from Miami to Key West.
Along the way, Flagler fell in love with the Lake Worth area and decided he would build the Hotel Royal Poinciana on the eastern shore of Lake Worth, where a lush grove of coconut palms had grown up following the shipwreck of the Providencia in 1878 with its cargo of 20,000 coconuts. On the western shore of the lake, he established a city named West Palm Beach, which he hoped would one day become a thriving metropolis larger than Jacksonville. The Hotel Royal Poinciana became the world’s largest resort, and Greater West Palm Beach indeed grew into a thriving metropolis larger than Jacksonville and the seat of government for one of the largest counties in the Southeast. Around 1900, Flagler decided to build a winter home on the eastern shore of Lake Worth. The home he built was unlike any of his many other residences. It was a home for the Muses, a museum.
Built to evoke an image of a temple to Apollo, Whitehall’s public rooms are filled with symbolism related to the Muses of arts and literature. In 1960, Whitehall became a public museum and, in 2000, a National Historic Landmark. Today, Whitehall is known around the world as one of America’s great historic house museums.
But Flagler’s legacy doesn’t end there:
• The park at the east end of Clematis Street was given to West Palm Beach by Flagler and bears his name, as does the drive along the lake.
• The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens are built on land once farmed by the Yamato Colony, whom Henry Flagler attracted to the area through his Model Land Company.
• The land the Norton Museum of Art is built on was owned by Flagler and later given to West Palm Beach. Likewise, the land the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum and the 1916 Courthouse was built on was given to West Palm Beach by Henry Flagler’s Model Land Co.
• The land St. Ann Catholic Church was built on was donated by Henry Flagler. The land the Royal Poinciana Chapel was built on was donated by Henry Flagler.
• Woodlawn Cemetery was built and given to West Palm Beach by Henry Flagler.
• The Breakers hotel was established by Henry Flagler. And the list goes on, and on.
Of all the places Henry Flagler established or nurtured, of all the places he could have chosen to live and have his greatest impact, he chose the shores of Lake Worth to build the greatest lasting legacy of his amazing life: his winter home and Florida’s first museum, the world’s largest resort, and a thriving metropolis larger than Jacksonville.
And, he gave away thousands of acres for churches, a fire department, a waterworks, a power station, schools, clubs, cemeteries and parks.
While a great many have helped to make Palm Beach County the beautiful place that it has become over the last century, the county owes its very existence more to Henry Flagler than to any group of 10 other individuals. More important to Henry Flagler, without a doubt, would be the fact that so many have come to share his love of the place he thought of as “Paradise.”
The town was incorporated on April 17, 1911.
Courtesy of the Palm Beach Daily News.
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Henry Morrison Flagler / Our History
January 1st ,
2010 →
4:02 pm
@
Palm Beach Centennial
History of the Town
According to early settler accounts, Palm Beach received its name from a shipwreck named the “Providencia.” The ship washed ashore in January of 1878 with a load of cocoanuts bound from Havana to Barcelona. Early settlers lost no time claiming salvage and planting the cocoanuts which were not native to South Florida in an effort to launch tropical South Florida on a commercial cocoanut industry. Henry M. Flagler, a millionaire industrialist and owner of the Florida East Coast Railway, began buying acres of land on the island of Palm Beach. Many early homesteaders found themselves very wealthy, as orders had been given to buy “at any price.” The town was incorporated on April 17, 1911 and soon began long range plans to develop and protect the island paradise. In 1929, the Garden Club of Palm Beach joined the Town and formally sponsored the preparation of a Town Plan. After over 70 years of graceful evolution, the Town today has a Strategic Plan and a Comprehensive Plan which guide continuing efforts to preserve the quality and beauty of Palm Beach.
Palm Beach has always been more than lavish parties and ornate buildings; the island’s history is rooted in the people who have called this enchanting place home. They are the industrialists and the socialites, the civic leaders and the cultural elite, people dedicated to keeping alive the notion that Palm Beach is like nowhere else in the world. That notion, like their vision, has endured.
For everyone from Hollywood stars to heads of state, from literary and artistic icons to Old Money and international business magnates, the allure of this lush island has been irresistible. It is known all over the world as a place synonymous with “The Good Life.”
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History of the Town / Our History
