Firing Range Reason For Gun Club Road

Bob Michaels, a language arts teacher at Emerald Cove Middle School in Wellington and former Palm Beach Post TV critic, wrote to ask about the story behind “Gun Club Road.”
“Obviously at some point in time there must have been one,” he said.
Indeed, there was a gun club, say residents of Gun Club Estates, a neighborhood of six square blocks developed in the 1950s.
It’s framed by Military Trail, Kirk Road, Southern Boulevard and, of course, Gun Club Road.
Residents say a shooting range operated in the area, and when the developer bought the tract, he named the neighborhood for it. Streets are named for guns: Browning, Colt, Winchester.
Now, of course, the road is better known as home to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the county jail, or as it’s sometimes called, the “Gun Club Hilton.”
We searched through clips, 1950s city directories and property records, but never learned the name of the gun range.
We wondered whether it’s because it wasn’t an established facility, but rather just a commonly used spot.
Or, it might have been connected to the nearby Morrison Field air base, now Palm Beach International Airport. Longtime lawyer Ray Royce recalls that the area where the jail and the Trump golf course now stand had a bunker where he thinks the military stored munitions.
Readers, can you help?
Mail bag: Our Jan. 8 segment on John D. MacArthur prompted a call from
retired mortgage broker Jim Hartigan of North Palm Beach. He wanted to also
point out that MacArthur was a cousin of World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Tags: place names, unanswered questions