LIVING HISTORY
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Port St. Lucie 50th Anniversary
When the Fourth of July came, the kids spent a week decorating
their bikes to ride in the parade, Gessner says. “Just
about anyone who could walk or ride was in it. There were so
many people in the parade that you’d think there wouldn’t
be anybody left to watch it.”
The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office had a jail on Port St. Lucie
Boulevard, she recalled. “It was just one cell near Floresta. It
was kind of funny looking out there in the middle of nowhere.”
The First United Methodist Church on Prima Vista celebrated
its 50th anniversary last year. The first church in Port St. Lucie,
it opened in 1960. Other churches met at the Port St. Lucie
Marina until they could find or build a place of their own.
Just one year before that, in 1959, GDC had built the city’s
first bridge over the North Fork of the St. Lucie River — on
Prima Vista.
Gessner remembers walking with her husband and children
to an abandoned house about a mile north of the bridge
— through what would become St. Lucie West. They had
birthday parties out there for several years, but then she discovered
that the area was infested with rattlesnakes. “I nearly
died,” she says. “Of course we made a lot of noise with all the
children who came along, but that was the last birthday party
we ever had there.”
ANOTHER BRIDGE
It would be 10 years before the second bridge was built
— this time on Port St. Lucie Boulevard in 1969 to coincide
with the opening of an interchange with the 12-year-old
Florida’s Turnpike.
Interstate 95 was not constructed in St. Lucie County until
1983 — the same year Port St. Lucie Hospital, later renamed
St. Lucie Medical Center, opened on U.S. 1, providing the
growing city’s residents with their own hospital. By then, the
population was about 15,000.
An interchange at St. Lucie West Boulevard was opened
about 1990 — a joint project envisioned by Thomas J. White,
SUSAN BURGESS
Cars enter busy St. Lucie West Boulevard from the Interstate 95 interchange
built by Thomas J. White, founder of St. Lucie West and the Wingfield family,
founders of The Reserve. From there, drivers can get to PGA Village, the
New York Mets spring training stadium, and can also go over to Prima Vista
and the older sections of Port St. Lucie.
founder of the St. Lucie West planned community and
builder of the New York Mets spring training stadium, and
the Wingfield family, builders of The Reserve, an upscale
community planned for the west side of the interstate. Part of
that is now PGA Village.
St. Lucie West, a 4,600-acre development built on the former
Peacock Ranch property over a 20-year span, became the
city’s showcase and wealthiest community. Intended to be a
self-contained town-like place with neighborhoods or communities
that each had its own distinctive personality, it was
started by the Thomas J. White Corp., and ended up being
owned by Core Communities, which then went on to develop
Tradition, another master-planned upscale community that is
still being developed today.
Tradition, on the west side of the interstate, includes the
Center for Innovation, a research park boasting such tenants
as the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Research and the
Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute. In 2014, Martin Memo-
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SUSAN BURGESS
Tradition, a community west of Interstate 95 planned by Core Communities, features scenic views in its town hall area. Tradition is also the site of the
Tradition Center of Innovation, a bio-research park which has attracted major research institutions and where Martin Memorial Health Systems will build a
new hospital.