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    Palm Coast
    Palm Coast
    Palm Coast
    Ebook186 pages50 minutes

    Palm Coast

    By Arthur E. Dycke

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What is paradise? Before 1969, land that would eventually become the City of Palm Coast was considered by some as nothing more than a "big pine-covered swamp." But when the corporate eyes of ITT/Levitt and Sons looked upon the virtually uninhabited land, they saw 22,000 acres of golf courses, marinas, oceanfront motels, scenic drives, and house lots awaiting the arrival of sun-seeking "pioneers." Marketing strategies targeting urban residents in the North and Midwest offered slices of land cut out of miles of forest, and soon a 500-mile infrastructure of roads, utilities, and sewer lines bound Palm Coast to a future that included becoming the largest planned unit development in Florida history.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439629345
    Palm Coast
    Author

    Arthur E. Dycke

    Perhaps some considered it paradise when life was so secluded that it took a 13-mile drive to buy a quart of milk; perhaps othersfound "the perfect place to live" when errands were shortened by a new shopping center in 1979. Now comprising about two-thirds of Flagler County's population, Palm Coast continues to attract residents and visitors alike. With a fascinating collection of photographs and illustrations, Arthur E. Dycke, co-city historian, a director of the City of Palm Coast Historical Society, and an adjunct faculty member at Daytona Beach Community College, presents this whirlwind history of a wilderness turned paradise.

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      Book preview

      Palm Coast - Arthur E. Dycke

      book.

      INTRODUCTION

      This book presents Palm Coast’s relatively short history from the time of its naming and development by the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) in 1969 until the present. The area’s long rich history before that time is briefly outlined in the description listed below.

      In the beginning, Palm Coast, like all of Florida, was under water. As the ocean receded, the land was occupied by animals such as mastodons and giant sloths. They were followed by Paleo-Indian hunters, about 15,000 years ago, who were ancestors to the area’s Timucuan Indians who occupied the land until the early 1800s. Ponce de Leon sailed past Palm Coast in 1513, claiming the land for Spain. Spaniards defeated the French at Matanzas Inlet but lost the land in 1763 to the English, who later built the Kings Road through the area. In 1783, Florida was returned to the Spaniards, and they occupied Palm Coast until it became a United States Territory in 1819 from military action by Andrew Jackson. The Spanish operated a mission here in the 16th century, and in the early 1800s they deeded huge land areas to Joseph M. Hernandez. He later built Bulow, St. Joseph, and Mala Compra Plantations on the land. James Audubon visited in 1832. The plantations were later destroyed in the Seminole Indian Wars, lasting from 1836 until 1842. Slaves built the St. Joe Canal. It is believed that Salt Road was used to supply the Confederacy until 1865. Thereafter, cattlemen, crackers, lumbermen, and small farmers shared the land with orange growers—who later went out of business due to a killing frost in 1895. In the 1880s and 1890s, Henry Flagler’s railroads and the Intracoastal Waterway’s canals were constructed. Flagler County was created in 1917. The area experienced increasing tourism, a land boom, and substantial moonshining in the 1920s. The Great Depression followed, hitting the county hard. During World War II, coastal spy watches occurred in the area. Those here in the 1950s witnessed the widening of U.S. 1, the construction of I-95, a school segregation dispute, and the building and operation of a large, modern Lehigh Cement Plant, in operation from 1952 until 1965.

      Most of the aforementioned events affected only the developed lands around an east-west line running along route 100 from Flagler Beach to the county seat in Bunnell. By 1969, the vast, mostly unpopulated area north of that line consisted primarily of endless pine forest, considerable swamp land, and six miles of coquina strewn, sand-barred ocean front. There were some rutted dirt roads, a few farms, a turpentine distillery, scattered beach houses, and businesses along the paved route A1A corridor, along with an empty and unused modern cement factory. Area residents boasted outstanding fishing and hunting that could be shared with rich visitors in a camp for a fee. Then, International Telephone and Telegraph Rayonier, Inc. (ITT) came to the region.

      PRE-ITT DIRT ROAD. The few roads in the area might have looked like this.

      One

      ITT BUILDS PALM COAST

      An abandoned plantation, a big pine covered swamp which a little corporate imagination turned into thousands of tiny slices of land which were sold as lots . . . for lots of money. Could this strange wild empty land be tamed and made livable?

      ROUTE A1A OCEANFRONT, C. 1973. This aerial photo showing part of the coastal A1A corridor acquired by ITT was taken just a few years after the beginning of the Palm Coast development project. It pictures the area from a few miles north of the present Hammock Dunes Bridge facing south toward Flagler Beach. Notice the main canal and marina land clearing just starting on the west side of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The Atlantic Ocean is barely visible in the upper left-hand corner of the picture. The land is almost completely unoccupied. A similar photo taken today would show the bridge and the entire area under full development.

      LEHIGH CEMENT PLANT, C. 1965. The first hint that something was going to happen in sparsely populated, rural Flagler County, Florida, came on January 1, 1969, when The Flagler Tribune front page announced the headline below.

      LEHIGH PROPERTY SOLD TO ITT RAYONIER. The story continued, The local Lehigh Portland Cement property has been sold to International Telephone and Telegraph Rayonier, Inc. for the sum of $4,500,000. The plant had been in operation from 1952 until 1965 and had been the only major industry and non-farm employer in this predominantly agricultural area.

      PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT AT PRINCESS PLACE, JUNE 1969. ITT Rayonier purchased 6,000 acres of property from prominent Flagler businessman Lewis E. Wadsworth and others. This was added to their newly acquired 13,000-acre Lehigh tract and combined with approximately 70,000 acres of forest land that the company already owned in Flagler and St. Johns Counties. On June

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