VERO OVERVIEW
SMITH COLLECTION, ARCHIVE CENTER, IRC MAIN LIBRARY
Downtown Vero was a bustling area in the 1920s until the
land boom busted and a hurricane sent developers packing.
Vero Beach City Hall, right, also housed the fire department.
prattle about the Florida ‘bubble’ bursting, it’s hard to suppress a
feeling of pity for those who heed such insipid propaganda,” Sellard
BOOM GOES BUST
But a combination of factors, including a killer hurricane in
Miami that crippled shipping in September 1926, toppled the
land boom and sent real-estate promoters scurrying. Far from hitting
County had a population of less than 7,000 in 1930. By 1950, the
county’s population stood at just less than 12,000, showing a slow
but steady increase.
36
wrote.
the 35,000 mark, Census records show that all of Indian River
Vero Beach’s barrier island was slower to develop than the
mainland. Considered remote and inhospitable and choked with
mosquitoes, it was inaccessible to all but the hardiest folks until
the first bridge, a wooden structure with an S-curve in the middle,
was built in 1920.
Electric power came to Vero’s mainland in 1917, but the beachside
was not illuminated until 1930. The Press Journal reported on
Dec. 28, 1930, that the city was laying a 1,700-foot, 3-ton cable
beneath Indian River Lagoon “all in one piece” to supply electric
power to the “peninsula.”
“The cable carries three direct current wires providing sufficient
voltage to supply the needs of two or three hundred dwelling >>
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