This week in history: Cloud Lake incorporated

In 1935 twin brothers Kenyon and Karl Riddle of West Palm Beach started building suburban homes on 36 acres they platted west of the city. Kenyon Riddle named the 5-acre lake that was created when the Seaboard Air Line Railroad needed fill for a nearby overpass was named Cloud Lake, after Seminole Chief Yaholoochee, or “The Cloud.” When the town was incorporated on Feb. 8, 1951, residents elected to name the town for the lake.

Map showing the Town of Cloud Lake, ca. 1950. (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

The tiny town of Cloud Lake, population 135, is bordered on the east by I-95 and the City of West Palm Beach, on the north by Palm Beach International Airport, and on the west and south by the Town of Glen Ridge.

Karl Riddle was the first West Palm Beach city manager and was the gatekeeper of Woodlawn Cemetery on Dixie Highway in the early 1920s. The house that came to be known as the Riddle House (above, in 1920) was built in 1905 as the cemetery caretaker’s residence. It stood across the street from the cemetery, on Acacia Road, until it was moved to Yesteryear Village in suburban Palm Beach in 1995.

Tags: buildings, incorporated, This Week in History