Thousands of people attended the Oct. 23, 1988, dedication of the David McCampbell Terminal at Palm Beach International Airport, named for the World War II naval flying ace and Medal of Honor recipient who retired to Palm Beach County and died here in 1996. The new state of the art terminal doubled the number of gates that had been at the airport since the previous expansion, in 1966, and introduced the shopping mall atmosphere that looks “like you’re down on Worth Avenue.”
Palm Beach International Airport in 1966 (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Tags: airports, This Week in History
The American German Club of the Palm Beaches held its first Oktoberfest in 1974, on the Lantana Road grounds the club purchased in 1970. The club began in 1967 as the Bavarian-American Club, but changed its name in 1970 to welcome all Germans as members, not just Bavarians. And it’s American German rather than German American — unlike the other clubs in the German American Society of Florida — to express that club members are Americans first and Germans second.
Festival goers gather under the pines at the American German Club in 1983. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Kegs of beer, too numerous to count, stand waiting for the thirsty crowds just outside the festival tent in 1983. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Dancing to the music of Dick Dreher and the Rheinlanders at the 1983 Oktoberfest (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Chef Horst Stielow tends to a sampling of the tons of bratwurst, knockwurst, and other sausages served at the 1983 Oktoberfest. (Palm Beach Post staff file photo)
Tags: festivals, immigrants, photos, This Week in History
On Oct. 10, 2006 voters in the rural community of Loxahatchee Groves approved incorporation by a vote of 458 to 350. Founded in 1917, Loxahatchee Groves is the oldest of the western communities and gets its name from the Seminole words for turtle river — Lowchow and hatchee — and the acres of citrus groves that occupied the land prior to settlement.
Tags: incorporated, This Week in History
On Oct. 1, 1931 the city of Clewiston was incorporated, but not for the first time. Clewiston had been incorporated in 1923, and then re-chartered in 1925. The city was named for early settler Alonzo Clewis, a Tampa banker who purchased a large tract of land southwest of Lake Okeechobee in the area then known as Sand Point.
In 1920 Clewis and Clewiston developers John and Marion O’Brien commissioned nationally known planner John Nolen to create a plan for the city.
1926 ad from the Miami News:
1938 Miami News feature on “The Glades District”:
Tags: Glades, incorporated, This Week in History
When a local Urban League chapter was proposed in 1971, Robert Moultrie of the Riviera Beach City Council said, “We need a group that can relate to everyone — where the black and white and poor and wealthy can work shoulder to shoulder.” When the chapter was officially formed on Sept. 26, 1972, Moultrie said, “It looks like we’ve finally got that group.”
Tags: African Americans, This Week in History
