early years, before mosquito control
and the comforts provided by electricity,
Indian River County wasn’t
postcard perfect.
The book takes readers from the
county’s beginnings, when farms
were carved out of the wetlands for
the cultivation of cabbages, potatoes,
tomatoes, grain, sugarcane and
cucumber. The climate would let
farmers grow four crops a year, promoters
said, and for the first time,
fresh vegetables would be available
all winter in the north. A 1917 postcard
shows Indian River Farms cabbages
being loaded on a train.
“Indian River County”
BY: The Indian River
Genealogical Society
Postcard History Series
Price: $19.99
Pages: 128/softcover
Another hypes a local enterprise
known as the Utopian Farms Development Project. Other
postcards advertise gushing artesian wells, vital for farming.
The sulphur water was supposed to be good for rheumatism,
too. There’s always been a Fountain of Youth in Florida, for sure.
Vegetable growing was later eclipsed by citrus, which the
book devotes considerable attention to. The book also takes
readers through the Boom era, when postcards of “winter
bathers” in the ocean took note of the area’s balmy climate.
Postcards from the 1920 through the 1950s show Vero’s growing
downtown, its schools, banks, churches and hotels. Most
of the Vero hotels depicted in the book were built in
Mediterranean Revival style, also known as Boom-era architecture.
Sadly, most of those grand old hostelries are gone.
A lifelong resident, I read the book with an eye to buildings
I recognized as still standing and ones that I remember but are
long gone. So many architectural gems have been razed: the
Royal Park Inn, site of the only public freshwater swimming
pool in the 1950s and early 60s. It’s been replaced by condominiums.
The storied Windswept Hotel on Sexton Plaza filled
its pool with salt water from the ocean. It was replaced by a
charmless Holiday Inn. The Hotel Vero Del Mar gave way to
a parking lot.
The book was well researched, so the postcard captions contain
solid information, some of which was new to me. I was
interested in pictures of the Spillway, a dam in the county’s
main drainage canal. Some residents might remember the
Spillway as a nearby neighborhood of shacks inhabited by
blacks, who cleaned homes and did yard work for whites in
Vero Beach. For years, they were virtually the only blacks living
in Vero. I doubt the Spillway shanties were ever featured
on a postcard, but I’m disappointed that the book made no
mention of Gifford, the county’s major African-American
community, and its residents' contributions to the county’s
development.
I enjoyed picking out Vero buildings that are still here, and
there were quite a few. The venerable old Pocahontas Building
doesn’t look much different now than in a 1926 postcard.
Same with the Islander Motel, Holman Stadium, Orange
Apartments, and many more. The first house in Vero’s newly
revitalized Osceola Park neighborhood, a bungalow built in
the Arts & Crafts style, looks like it did in a 1917 postcard. At
Christmas time now, it glows with holiday lights.
For the most changed view, I’d have to pick an undated
postcard showing the country estate of Judge James Andrews
near the corner of State Road 60 and 58th Avenue. It’s a pastoral
scene. The house is surrounded by palm trees and citrus
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groves. Today, the house is gone and the intersection is the
county’s busiest. That’s progress, I guess. 91