When walking the streets of downtown Vero Beach today, it is difficult for anyone to imagine the Vero of 100 years ago. By 1919, when the small hamlet of Vero was officially born (“Beach” would not be added to the name for six years), the population was less than 800 souls, for the most part farming families who came here to leave the cold north behind for the promise of a better life. What there was of downtown existed primarily at the intersection of Osceola Boulevard and Seminole Avenue, now 20th Street (State Road 60) and 14th Avenue.

For 61 years from 1948 to 2008, Vero Beach was a familiar name to baseball fans. Dodgertown was the classic major league spring training site. Then it was gone, and Vero survived.

Better bridges and roads, mosquito control and eventually, the widespread use of air-conditioning, even in public schools, made Vero Beach attractive to new residents during the postwar Baby Boom.

World War II brought permanent changes to the homefront, even to towns as small as Vero Beach in the early 1940s.

Like many latter-day retirees who visit towns up and down Florida’s east coast before deciding to settle in Vero Beach, a Vermonter named Henry T. Gifford checked out Titusville, Fort Pierce and the swamps now known as Miami before moving to Vero in 1887, when it was unnamed, unknown and mostly uninhabited.

Of all the people remembered during the celebration of Vero Beach’s centennial this year, citrus developer and businessman Arthur Mayfield Hill may be one of the most underappreciated.