Once homesteading was allowed in Florida, Thomas Moore Rickards was the first known settler to build a house. He settled in about 1897 along the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway. Photos courtesy of the Boca Raton Historical Society
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
The journey through Boca Raton’s history began with the Tequesta tribe, who left behind a 20-foot-high burial mound that remains standing in what today is the Boca Marina and Yacht Club area.
From 1953 to 1958, it was a roadside attraction called Ancient America, set up so that people traveling on Federal Highway could stop and walk through it.
This archeological treasure is called Barnhill Mound after the man who bought the 24 acres on which the site is roped off from the public, according to Susan Gillis, curator of the Boca Raton Historical Society and Museum.
The Tequesta left the area by about the 18th century, Gillis said during the first of four classes on Boca Raton’s history.
Gillis continued by exploring the area’s agrarian roots. In 1842, Florida passed the Armed Occupation Act that allowed settlers to homestead land.
They used it to grow tomatoes, potatoes and pineapples, she explained.
“They raised big honking tomatoes that could survive shipment north without refrigeration,” Gillis said.
Incorporated in 1925, this small farm town was blindsided by the land boom of the 1920s. That’s when Addison Mizner, here for only about a year, worked his magic. He’s best known for building The Cloister Inn that later became the Boca Raton Resort and Club.
It was his dream to turn Boca into “The Greatest Resort in the World.” But it never quite materialized as the Great Depression and the devastating hurricanes of 1926 and 1928 helped turn the area’s boom into a bust.
In need of economic revitalization, the area’s inhabitants returned to their agrarian roots planting winter vegetables. They became known for their prolific green beans.
To demonstrate its comeback, the city now had two traffic lights, which were turned off in summer.
But a fresh wave of prosperity washed over the area during WWII when the Army Air Corps opened a radar school on land that today is the Boca Raton Airport and the FAU main campus.
Everyone got into the act, renting rooms to the servicemen, including Lillian Williams, who not only rented out her home but also her chicken coop. Today her home is preserved as the Boca Raton Children’s Museum.
Following the war, Arthur Vining Davis, who made his wealth as founder of Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa), started Arvida Development Corp. He bought land and built homes and high-rises, spreading the population east to the ocean and west toward the Everglades.
In 1970 on the outskirts of Boca, IBM established its main complex, where they manufactured mainframes and developed the first personal computers. The company brought along 12,000 well-educated, well-paid employees interested in supporting all things cultural in Boca Raton.
The IBM offices relocated in the mid-1990s, but some employees of Big Blue decided to stay, helping Boca Raton to grow to the almost 90,000 people in the city and 120,000 in “west Boca” who now call this place home.
Learn More
To learn more about the history of Boca Raton, visit bocahistory.org. For more on the Lifelong Learning Society, visit fau.edu/lls or call 561-297-3185. To discover what early pioneer Frank Chesebro wrote in his diary, follow him at Twitter.com/BocaHistory. Every day “Frank” tweets his activities from 100 years ago.
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