It’s time to celebrate 125 Years of ‘Palm’

Here in South Florida, where businesses brag if they’ve been around a whole 20 years, and transplants presume the region’s history began around the time Walt Disney World opened, the year 1887, 125 years ago, is downright ancient.

But that’s how long our county, and several of its cities and landmarks, have had their names.

Think “Palm.”

On Jan. 9, 1878, the 175-ton brig Providencia (pictured above) was bound from Trinidad to Cadiz, Spain. Its cargo: 20,000 coconuts.

It turned out the sailors had dipped into the grog a bit during the voyage. So when the ship grounded on the coast of what is now Palm Beach, the tipsy crew thought it had landed in Mexico.

Once they realized where they were, they decided the ship could not go on with its cargo.

The few local residents of what was then called “the lake region” rushed to the beach.

“I was greeted by the mate of the vessel, with a bottle of wine and a box of cigars, as a sort of olive branch,’’ pioneer William Lanehart wrote. “There were 20,000 coconuts, and they seemed like a godsend to the people. For several weeks, everyone was eating coconuts and drinking wine.”

Lanehart (above on the left) and fellow pioneer Hiram Hammon (above, right) took the nuts as salvage and sold them for 2 1/2 cents each. Within a decade, the area was filled with palm trees, and the island had a new name.

On Jan. 15, 1887, a post office was established for Palm City. But settlers learned another post office already had the name, so it was renamed Palm Beach.

But that Palm City isn’t the one in Martin County. Sandra Thurlow’s History of Martin County suggests that name didn’t surface there before 1910 or 1912.

According to the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, “Edmund M. Brelsford and his brother, John, applied for a Palm City Post Office in January 1887, and were notified that the name had been approved for an office near Fernandina just a month earlier. Gus Ganford, a winter visitor from Philadelphia, is credited with suggesting… ‘Palm Beach,’… recorded in October 1887. ”

Tags: Palm Beach, place names, shipwrecks

This week in history: The Providencia wrecks on Palm Beach with a cargo of coconuts

On Jan. 9, 1878, the Spanish brig Providencia bound from Mexico to Spain with a cargo of logs, hides and 20,000 coconuts ran aground on what was then known at the lake region. Local residents took the coconuts as salvage and within a decade, the area was filled with palm trees, and the island had a new name — Palm Beach.

Tags: Palm Beach, place names, shipwrecks, This Week in History

Longtime store owner remembers West Palm Beach landmark

Frequent “Post Time” contributor Jim Anderson, nearly 83 and still working hard behind the counter at his downtown Anderson Hardware store, recently passed along this remembrance of “Sonny-Boy’s Fruit Company.”

“For many years, prior to the second world war, a landmark existed at the southeast corner of the intersection of Belvedere Road and South Dixie. It was an open-air market which featured fresh citrus and vegetables. During business hours, one could pull a vehicle right onto the property and ship for locally grown citrus, as well as purchase a fresh-squeezed glass of juice.

“The property was also a place where many of the newspaper home-delivery ‘boys’ received and rolled their morning papers, in the early hours, for distribution to nearby neighborhoods. All of the newspapers of that era made drops at Sonny-Boy’s, including The Palm Beach Post-Times, The Miami Herald, and on Sundays — the Miami Daily News.

“The carriers would arrive to find large bundles of newspapers — marked with route numbers — which would be rolled and covered with pieces of old newspapers, which had been cut into smaller shapes. The wrappers were then glued around the papers, put into large bags and ‘biked’ for delivery.

“Sonny-Boy’s disappeared before the mid-fifties, as the properties became more and more valuable. The Sonny-Boy’s corner became a bank (Security Exchange). Eventually, the southwestern corner of the intersection was (and is) occupied by The Palm Beach Post. Howard Johnson’s restaurant was on the north side of Belvedere — between Olive and Dixie, and the Mount Vernon Motor Lodge (now, Hotel Biba) was opposite.

“A block south of Belvedere (on Dixie) was the El Cid Bar. Another block south is Hall Hardware. The bar has changed several times, but Hall’s still operates.”

Update: Susan “Su” George, American history chair for the Okeechobee chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, wrote recently with a possible answer to one of our enduring mysteries: the name origin for Ritta Island, at Lake Okeechobee: “My theory is that since no animal life was on the island (except) snakes and gators, the locals might have referred to it as ‘Critter Island’ (and) that got shortened to ‘Ritta.’”

Tags: agriculture, mysteries, place names, West Palm Beach

Lynn University celebrates 20 years

The world learned of Boca Raton’s Lynn University in January 2010 when four students and two faculty members were among the hundreds of thousands killed in Haiti’s earthquake.

This week, the university celebrates a more cheerful milestone: Its 20th anniversary as Lynn.

The school had opened in 1962 as a two-year women’s school named Marymount College, operated by nuns from the Religious Order of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

The school later went bankrupt and prepared to close. Students planned car washes and other events and even went door to door with soup cans and signs reading, “Save Our College.”

In 1971, Marymount got a visit from educator Donald Ross — no relation to Donald Alexander Ross, the first Lake Park resident killed in World War II and the man for whom the road in northern Palm Beach County is named.

Ross intended to buy the soon-to-be-defunct school’s library for his own program at Wilmington College in Delaware, a school he’d founded in 1967.

“I walked all over campus and could not believe how beautiful it was,” Ross told Lynn’s magazine in 2006.

Instead of buying up Marymount’s books, Ross persuaded Wilmington trustees to merge with Marymount and make it a coed college. By 1972, enrollment was up to 350.

In 1974 the school’s name was changed to the College of Boca Raton, but it wasn’t until nearly a decade later that it would begin offering four-year degrees.

In 1991 it would get its third name: Lynn.

In September 1991, the 1,000-student College of Boca Raton was renamed for philanthropist Eugene Lynn.

Palm Beach Post file photo provided by the Lynn family

Lynn (above, with his wife Christine) had become president of the Boca Raton-based Lynn Insurance Group in 1956. Over three decades, he and his wife, Christine, donated $3.5 million for a student dorm and put up the money for the Lynn Student Center, built in 1963. Eugene Lynn died in 1999.

Ross would run the school until 2006, when son Kevin took over.

Lynn now has about 1,660 undergraduates and about 450 graduate students. Its five colleges and two schools offer 34 majors. It’s become a leader in serving students with learning challenges.

Marymount College in Boca Raton became coed in the early 1970s. It is today’s Lynn University. (Photo courtesy of Lynn University)

Nuns at Marymount College (Photo courtesy of Lynn University)

Marymount campus in 1972. (Photo courtesy of Lynn University)

Tags: Boca Raton, Lynn University, place names, schools

This week in history: First Palm Beach County airport approved

On Sept. 20, 1929, the first airport in the Palm Beach area was officially recognized when the federal government approved a beacon and landing marker for Lightbown Municipal Airport. The airport, named for Palm Beach Mayor Cooper Lightbown, was established by the Greater Palm Beach Airport Association and the Junior Chamber of Commerce on a 440-acre tract on Belvedere Road. In 1936 the airport we now know as Palm Beach International began commercial service and was renamed Morrison Field.

This photo of a Ford tri-motor passenger plane was taken in 1929. From Post Time reader James P. Sikes who submitted the photo: The plane was the “747 of its day. Note the huge wingspan. The event was a plane ride over West Palm Beach for the employees of the West Palm Beach Water Co., shown standing with the plane along with company trucks prior to take-off in West Palm Beach. My father is the man in the middle back row, wearing the bow tie. His name, James Sikes.”

Coincidentally, Charles Lindbergh flew over West Palm Beach on his way to Miami the day before Lightbown Municipal Airport got its federal certification,

The Palm Beach Post story says “Col. and Mrs. Lindbergh passed over West Palm Beach at 12:52 Thursday afternoon, flying very high, and somewhat west of the city. His plane was moving at a rapid rate of speed.”

Tags: airports, place names, This Week in History