COVER STORY
Few structures are visible on South Beach, at the bottom of this May 1921 photograph, in this aerial shot of the new Fort Pierce Inlet.
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FORT PIERCE INLET AT 100
100 YEARS
AND COUNTING
ST. LUCIE COUNTY REGIONAL HISTORY CENTER
Events to mark the day the Fort Pierce Inlet
and the Atlantic Ocean met a century ago
BY ANTHONY WESTBURY
It was the biggest party the young city had ever seen.
Almost the entire population of Fort Pierce fewer than
2,000 people took to the streets on May 12, 1921, to celebrate
an achievement that had been more than 10 years
in the making: the cutting of a new inlet that “married the
ocean and the Indian River.”
The daylong celebration included the city’s first parachute
jump, boat rides, parades and speeches, a community fish
dinner, a big local baseball game, concerts and a street dance.
It was a moment for chest-puffing civic pride.
There had long been an original inlet that linked ocean and
river. It was a mile or so north of downtown across from St.
Lucie Village, meeting the Atlantic at a point roughly where
present-day Pepper Park stands.
Yet the old inlet had proved barely adequate for the flatbottomed
fishing vessels that used it most frequently. The >>