LIVING HISTORY
While the North Fork was usually calm except for rolling tarpon and jumping fish, the Pruitt family waters were stormy.
camp since seriously becoming a fishing and hunting guide in
1928. Columnist Ed Bucklow, the Post-Times outdoor editor, says
the site had gotten its name during Prohibition, when bootleggers
used the remote spot as a transfer point for illegal liquor.
“Many a Rolls Royce, Packard and Pierce Arrow has been
parked under those trees over there,” Burt said, pointing to
the pines on both sides of the driveway in 1962.
“Many a plane load of whisky has landed on the river right
here,” he said, “and there were three stills going full blast on
that island across from the camp.”
Burt said the North Fork location had been on a main
wagon trail during the early settlement days. Just below the
camp, there was a ferry that served the “sizeable” community
known as Spruce Bluff.
In a 1970 column by Post sports writer Breard Snellings,
Burt said Spruce Bluff “was settled by veterans of the Spanish
American War and they raised pineapples and fished for
a living. Then when the Flagler railroad was built around the
turn of the century, everyone left to live by the tracks, in a
new town called Stuart. Now people are leaving Stuart and
coming back here to live in Port St. Lucie.”
Before that, according to the Florida Game and Freshwater
Fish Commission, the area was where the “great chiefs
MARY DODGE
Micanopy and Osceola camped, hunted and fished by the
shores of the great St. Lucie River.”
According to Bucklow, Burt actually bought the land in
about 1946. So, it is probably then that he and, it appears,
Cora Leigh and son Burt Jr., started building the camp and
perhaps living there. Apparently over the years, he continued
buying land along the river that was later sold to General
Development Corp., but county records are unclear as to how
far his domain stretched.
By February 1947, Burt and his family had themselves wellestablished
38 Port St. Lucie Magazine
on the banks of the North Fork and his reputation
as a fishing guide was growing. Apparently so was the animosity
between him and his mother-in-law, Sue Henderson.
The headline on the Feb. 12, 1947, Fort Pierce News Tribune
was “Aged mother and war veteran son dead as result of
family fight at St. Lucie River camp.”
Sue D. Henderson, 58, and her son Carroll, 39, were dead
from abdominal bullet wounds made by a .22 rifle and Burt
and Cora Leigh were in jail. Mrs. Henderson had been in
Florida about three months; her son had just arrived.
Carroll Henderson of Homerville, Ga, had indeed been
decorated for his service in World War II. He was named for
his maternal grandfather, Duncan Carroll Carmichael, who
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