Pepper Served 41 Years In Congress

Probably the most fun I have with Post Time is telling readers the stories behind the names of parks and other places they drive past every day. Now that Neighborhood Post is in the Treasure Coast, I wanted to cover locales there as well. It’s not always easy.
I knew for whom Pepper Park, in Fort Pierce, is named, but not how.
St. Lucie County’s parks department told me it was named for “Clyde Pepper, a former Florida governor.”
Of course, it was Claude Pepper: never governor, but America’s longest-serving federal legislator(41 years: U.S. Senate, 1936-1951 and House of Representatives, 1963-1989), presidential candidate (1948), and champion of the elderly.
Pepper, who died in 1989, is one of 30 people, and the only Floridian, to lie in state in the Capitol.
We finally were directed to the Mildred and Claude Pepper Library and Museum at Florida State University, which told me this about Pepper Park:
The federal government had appropriated the 42 acres, with 1,200 feet of waterfront, in 1890 for the Indian River House of Refuge. In 1938, the government gave St. Lucie County a permit to improve the tract for use as a park. Later, Pepper pushed through a bill to return federal parcels to local governments for recreation.
On Oct. 25, 1948, the land was transferred to the county, which then turned it over to the state. The park was named for Pepper. The state returned the land to the county in 1983. Pepper Library: (850) 644-9311. Web page: www.claudepeppercenter.fsu.edu
St. Lucie County Parks: (772) 462-1517. Web page: www.stlucieco.gov/leisure/
Florida Parks: (850) 245-2157. Web page: www.dep.state.fl.us/Parks/

Tags: place names