Found 3 blog entries tagged as Palm Beach history.

Palm Beach County’s first tourists were the early settlers. These earliest visitors became the first residents of the area. The first permanent residents of Palm Beach County date back to 1872. They struggled to clear the dense marshland for building homes and growing crops.   

Farming was the way that most of the early homesteaders and pioneers made their living. Most people probably do not know that Palm Beach County was once the largest pineapple growing area in the continental United States (at that time Hawaii was still a territory). Pineapple growing in Florida goes back to 1860, when Benjamin Baker planted the first pineapples in the Florida Keys at Plantation Key from plants he had brought in from Cuba. By 1876, pineapple farming was…

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Did you know that there are only two marked graves in Palm Beach?  Hidden among the dense green ferns of the Pizza Al Fresco courtyard off Worth Avenue, you will find the only cemetery in Palm Beach proper. Side-by-side in a lushly landscaped courtyard, down a Via, just off Worth Avenue you will find to old headstone markers. Neither belongs to a human being.

The more famous of the little-known pair is Johnnie Brown, the “Human Monkey”. Johnnie Brown was the pet spider monkey of Addison Mizner. According to Palm Beach history and folklore Mizner was an eccentric Palm Beach character of the roaring twenties. Johnnie Brown was just one of Mizner’s exotic and unusual pets. The monkey accompanied Mizner to all his Gilded Age high society events.…

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The Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum located in the restored old 1916 Courthouse, 300 North Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach enriches the lives of residents and visitors by sharing local history, making it thought-provoking and telling. The Historical Society of Palm Beach County is a nonprofit organization.  The mission is to collect, preserve the rich history of the area, as well as share the cultural heritage of the Palm Beaches.

There are 4 galleries within the historical museum. The past comes alive in two permanent galleries and two rotating temporary exhibits that reflect the impact of the many cultures in Palm Beach County’s diverse past. One popular exhibit is entitled “Building Paradise: Addison Mizner's…

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