16 News
The COASTAL STAR
LANTANA
Continued from page 1 Lillias, the island’s oldest house, built in 1927. She writes the Brown Wrapper, a local history newsletter. She hosts the island’s free Happy Hour History Tours every month. On May 7, as about 20 residents on folding chairs in McKinley Park listened, Donahue introduced them to the first settler of European descent in what is now Palm Beach County — and Lantana. “Our beginning was really in 1873,” she began. On Oct. 20, 1872, Hannibal Dillingham Pierce was 37, a Maine transplant working as an assistant lighthouse keeper when the steamship Victor shipwrecked just south of Jupiter Inlet. The crew and passengers were rescued, and the next year Pierce converted one of the Victor’s abandoned lifeboats into a small sailboat and headed The original 126 acres might have become known down Lake Worth with his family, to settle on a small island as Lyman, had owner Morris Benson Lyman not named the fledgling area Lantana. at the south end. He built a cottage with a “I would love to have been During that thatched roof, raised tomatoes there in that time and have met decade, Finnish and eggplants for shipping to him,” Cindy Jamison says. “I’m immigrants Jacksonville, and homesteaded proud that my family had a part arrived in Palm on the island. in settling the area.” Beach County. M.B. Lyman When Seminole Indians told She is Cindy Lyman Jamison The 2000 him hypoluxo meant “water all of Boynton Beach, daughter of census tallied 4,879 in Palm around, no get out,” he knew Kenny Lyman, granddaughter Beach County, but that was a what to name his homestead. of Walter Lyman, and great10% drop from the 1990 count. You might call Hannibal “Today, I’d estimate we have granddaughter of M.B. Lyman. Pierce Lantana’s founding Lantana is called Lantana about 1,000 Finns in Lantana because Morris Benson Lyman father. alone,” says Peter Makila, the But then came E.R. Bradley. (1860-1924), a carpenter from honorary consul of Finland. No, not that E.R. Bradley. Canada, homesteaded 126 “The older ones are dying, and acres where the west end of the the younger ones may not be “I live on ‘old man’ Bradley’s Lantana bridge stands today. coming because it’s difficult to property,” Janet DeVries Lyman Point, it was called, get a visa. A lot of the young Naughton will tell you with until M.B. renamed it Lantana professionals are going to pride. Point, after the bright yellow, Silicon Valley.” A professor of U.S. history In 1948, construction red and orange flowers native to and faculty librarian at Palm began on Finlandia House, the South Florida. In 1889, he built a house on Beach State College, Naughton local Finns’ still very active is the author of numerous books the property, still standing and community center. On July 16, 1950, the very much alive as the Old Key on the county’s history. She Lime House seafood restaurant. Southeast Florida State lives in The Moorings, a condo You’d be forgiven for Sanatorium opened on Lantana community that sits on land thinking it’s the oldest house Road, the second of four state homesteaded by E.R. Bradley. You’re probably thinking of in mainland Lantana, but that tuberculosis hospitals. After Edward Riley Bradley (1859honor belongs to the home his the state tuberculosis board 1946), who ran the legendary father, Morris Kennedy Lyman, was dissolved in 1969, it was Palm Beach gambling casino built two years earlier. It’s still renamed the A.G. Holley State and lives on in spirits at E.R. standing, much altered, at 122 S. Hospital after the retiring Bradley’s Saloon, the popular Lake Drive. chairman. When the town celebrates The hospital was closed West Palm Beach bar. Edwin Ruthven Bradley its centennial in Bicentennial in 2012, and the building (1842-1915) arrived in 1877 Park, today’s residents will demolished in 2014, to make to become, with his wife and be partying on M.B. Lyman’s way for more condos and a children, the first documented former homestead. shopping center. white settler on the west side of By the time the man “I was in charge of the lake in what is now Lantana. Mail delivery was patchy who named Lantana died in Christmas,” Malcolm Balfour then, and the Jupiter Lighthouse 1924, the town was already boasts, “until I had the usual the end of the line, but in incorporated, and Florida was firing.” From 1972 until his death 1885 rural mail routes were booming. “People came initially in 1988, Generoso Paul Pope established and Lantana’s E.R. Jr., publisher of The National Bradley was the first to walk the because this was America’s last frontier,” Janet Naughton says. Enquirer, added a touch of stretch from Lantana to Lemon holiday magic to the tabloid’s City, known today as Miami. He “It was unexplored, and then when the real estate boom came, customary scandal and sleaze was paid $600 a year. Alas, the original “barefoot people just poured into South by erecting “the world’s tallest mailman” probably never heard Florida.” Christmas tree” beside Lantana’s In 1925, the first bridge the title, coined by Theodore railroad tracks. linking the town to the barrier Pratt for his 1943 novel. Thousands came from “Later, E.R. Bradley opened island was built. Beachgoers no miles around to ogle the general stores in Lantana, longer had to take a boat and 7,000 twinkling lights, 400 Boynton Beach and Lemon then trudge through mangrove ornaments, and 50 3-foot candy City,” Naughton says. “You swamp for a day at the beach. canes adorning the towering In 1931, 40 acres on the south balsam fir. From 1972 until he could say he had the first chain end of Hypoluxo Island seceded was fired in 1980, Hypoluxo store in Florida.” from the town to become part of Island resident Balfour, 83, Manalapan. was the Enquirer’s articles
June/July 2021
editor, a job that also entailed making sure the world’s tallest Christmas tree was indeed the world’s tallest Christmas tree. “Well, Pope came down one day during the first year, and he had a picture in The New York Times that said the tree at Rockefeller Center was 76 feet tall. Ours was 74,” Balfour recalls. “So I pointed out that the Rockefeller tree was on a 6-foot pedestal. “He seemed satisfied.” In the past 100 years, Lantana has seen 26 mayors come and go, including three women, but none lasted as long as Dave Stewart. First elected in 2000, he served the town for 21 years, until his defeat in the March 2021 election. “But I was president of the Hypoluxo Island Neighborhood Association in the late ’80s and chairman of the planning and zoning board for six or seven years,” he says, “so I can say I’ve been active in this town for a third of its history.” Stewart arrived in 1977, settled on the north end of the island, and never left. But he tried: In 1989, when their son was born, the Stewarts realized they were living in a neighborhood with lots of elderly residents but no small children. “We looked from Boca Raton to Sewall’s Point and found nothing with the same amenities and hometown feeling. That’s why we stayed,” Stewart says. “It’s more busy now, it’s more congested, but it’s also gotten better. The first 100 years are over, and now we’ve got the next 100 to look forward to.” In 1892, Morris Benson Lyman, who had given Lantana its name, also gave it a cemetery — 2 acres at the southeast corner of Arnold Avenue and Lantana Road. A year later, his 9-monthold daughter, Rachael, was among the first to be buried in Evergreen Cemetery. In 1909, his father, Morris Kennedy Lyman, arrived, and in 1924, he joined them there. In all, 18 marked grave sites remember the town’s eight pioneer families. But not Edwin Ruthven Bradley or Hannibal Dillingham Pierce. Bradley moved south after his time in Lantana and was buried in Miami’s Woodlawn Cemetery in 1915. Pierce, the first white settler on Hypoluxo Island, died in 1898 and was buried in Lakeside Cemetery on the waterfront in West Palm Beach. After Henry M. Flagler donated land to the west that became Woodlawn Cemetery, most of the early, lakeside graves were moved there. But not all. Along with about 40 other reluctant pioneers, Hannibal Pierce still rests today somewhere beneath the Norton Museum of Art. Ú
Lantana Centennial Celebration
When: 3-9:35 p.m. July 4 Where: Bicentennial Park, 321 E. Ocean Ave.
Schedule • Food and craft vendors (3-9:05 p.m.) • Stilt walkers in July Fourth costume (3:30-7:30 p.m.) • Sportsman’s Park carnival activities and bungee trampoline (4-8 p.m.) • Unveiling of public art, a 16-foot sailboat sculpture (4:45-5 p.m.) • Professional band (5-8 p.m.) • Water balloon, hula hoop and watermelon-eating contests (7-7:45 p.m.) • Special presentation to former Mayor Dave Stewart, followed by most patriotic baby contest conducted by Mayor Robert Hagerty (88:15 p.m.) • Professional band (8:15-9 p.m.) • Massing of the Colors presentation, Pledge of Allegiance and national anthem sung by the band (9-9:05 p.m.) • Fireworks show (9:05-9:35 p.m.) Fireworks display details • Opening — 430 shells; main body — 770 shells; finale — 2,523 shells; total shell count — 3,723 • Total of 6-inch shells (largest shells) planned in display — 196 • The location of the barge will remain the same as in previous years. • Spectator parking available at the Kmart lot, with shuttle to South Oak Street and to East Ocean Avenue at Lantana Beach.
Commemorative book To commemorate Lantana’s centennial, the town contracted with StarGroup International of West Palm Beach to create 5,000 copies of “Lantana, A Small Fishing Village, 1921-2021,” a 143-page hardcover book filled with color photographs, history and memories. Lantana residents can pick up a free copy at Town Hall, 500 Greynolds Circle, or at the July 4 centennial celebration. Books can be purchased for $20.21 each by nonresidents or residents wishing extra copies.
