‘Post’ Is The Oldest, But Not First, Newspaper In Palm Beach County

Q: Is The Palm Beach Post the oldest newspaper in Palm Beach County?
A: Yes, but it’s not the first. That would be The Tropical Sun.
Founded as The Indian River News in Melbourne in 1887, it was renamed The Tropical Sun and moved to Juno on March 18, 1891 and then to West Palm Beach in January 1895. Henry Flagler bought it in 1902. It lost ground to The Palm Beach Post in the ensuing decades and a modest version moved to Palm Beach in 1941, back to West Palm Beach in 1950, and into posterity in 1956.
The Gazetteer, born in 1893, is considered the first newspaper actually born in West Palm Beach proper, but it was short-lived; the city’s historic downtown fire in February 1896 destroyed it in only its third year of operation. The salvaged equipment was used to form The Daily Lake Worth News a year later, on Feb. 12, 1897. A decade later, in 1907, that publication became The Palm Beach Daily News, the island’s famed “Shiny Sheet.”
Another newspaper, The Weekly Lake Worth News, lasted only from 1894 to 1908, and a publication called The Palm Beach Independent from December 1925 to August 1929.
The Palm Beach Post was founded as the weekly Palm Beach County in 1909 and became the daily Palm Beach Post in January 1916. It was bought by casino magnate E.R. Bradley in 1934, then to entrepreneur and newspaper chain owner John Perry in 1947, and finally to the Cox national newspaper chain in 1969.
The Palm Beach Times, founded in 1922, was bought by Bradley in 1934, and sold, along with the Post, to Perry in 1947 and Cox in 1969. It was renamed The Evening Times in 1979 and merged with the Post in 1987.
The Miami Herald has also historically served Palm Beach County, although it has geared back dramatically in recent years, and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel circulates in southern Palm Beach County.
Palm Beach Post: (561) 820-4100
Historical Society of Palm Beach County: (561) 832-4164
Read More: Pioneers in Paradise, by Jan Tuckwood and Eliot Kleinberg