LIVING HISTORY
for $50 an acre. He established his permanent home on this land along Old
Dixie Highway.
“My dad walked to Indrio School,” Flesche says. “At the end of the day,
he had to go and pick pineapples. He spent a lot of time in the fields. The
railroad ran right along Old Dixie Highway, where the farm was. They would
take crates full of pineapples to the railroad and hang out a yellow flag. This
meant that the rail cars should stop to pick up a delivery of pineapples. They
were shipped to Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.”
But freezes, nematodes and competition from Hawaii, where Jim Dole
founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Co. in 1901, challenged Florida’s supremacy
POST CARD VIEW
OF PINEAPPLES
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ST. LUCIE COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM
The Indian River region’s pineapple industry was at its peak in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries and the region’s pineapple culture was celebrated in postcards. Above, pineapple
and other fruit were sold locally by buggy.
PINEAPPLE POSTCARDS FROM
FLORIDA PHOTO ARCHIVE