Port St. Lucie 50th Anniversary
LIVING HISTORY
PORT ST. LUCIE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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330 men, women and children.
“I grew up on a 20-acre farm in the 1950s and
60s on U.S. 1 near what is now Port St. Lucie
Boulevard,” says Christine Williams, 55, whose
family owned the first business in the area that
was to become Port St. Lucie. “I was born in
1955 and there were almost no families around.
There was one family down on the corner, also
named Williams but not related to us. Their
middle daughter Debbie was my friend.
“We made our own fun, like kids did in those
days. We played with the cows and horses and
chickens, and later we rode horses where they
eventually built the strip malls and the Village
Green shopping center.”
NO SCHOOLS
There were so few children that there were no
schools. The school bus picked up the kids and
drove them to Fort Pierce, she says.
Port St. Lucie incorporated as a city when
Christine Williams was 6, in 1961. She recalls
sitting in the giant conch shell replica outside
of her family’s store, “in the middle of nowhere
waving at trucks and cars on their way to
Miami and the Keys. I guess they were pretty
startled.”
According to the Port St. Lucie Planning
and Zoning Department, the reason for incorporation
was a dispute with St. Lucie County
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An early brochure from General Development Corporation shows eight homes plus one
partially built and many still-empty lots.
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