BEACHES
accessible to all. The elegant oceanfront
Beachland Casino was completed in 1925.
The three-story building housed a casino,
dance floor and an Olympic size salt water
pool, which was drained weekly and
refilled with ocean water. Unfortunately, a
1928 hurricane left the second and third
floors uninhabitable.
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Then during World War II, the Army used
the casino as barracks and later the Navy
housed its WAVES (Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service) there. After
the war, it reverted back to hotel status
and was renamed the Windswept Hotel.
During the next decade, it went through
two more ownership changes and two
City of Vero Beach 1919-2019 VeroBeach100.org
more names: The Southward Inn and the
High Tide Hotel. It was demolished in 1960
and replaced with Holiday Inn, which is at
the end of Sexton Plaza today.
WALDO COMES TO TOWN
A local eccentric by the name of Waldo
Sexton came to Vero Beach in 1913 as a
plow salesman and fell in love with the
tropical paradise he encountered. He
invested all of his $500 in savings as a 10
percent down payment on 100 feet of
oceanfront and 160 acres on 12th Street.
He spent his first 20 years farming and
raising a family and was responsible for
clearing the right of way for A1A that ran
from the south county line to the Sebastian
Inlet in the 1920s. When a storm blew
down a barn in 1933, he salvaged the
wood and hauled it over to his beachfront
property to build a weekend retreat for his
family. His cottage consisted of two rooms
on the first floor separated by a 25-footwide
open area. The second floor added
four more rooms and a combination
kitchen/dining area over the breezeway.
The eclectic structure, built only by
Waldo’s verbal instructions, was furnished
with antiques and oddities that Waldo
collected from around the world. Its charm
generated so much interest and so many >>
SMITH COLLECTION, ARCHIVE CENTER, IRC MAIN LIBRARY
The Beachland Casino later became the Windswept Hotel, a popular inn on the ocean that served as a
residence for WAVES, or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, from the U.S. Naval Air Station
in Vero Beach during World War II.
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