History of Fort Pierce

Fort Pierce takes its name from an Army post built on the Indian River bluff during the Second Seminole War and named for the regiment's commander, Benjamin Pierce.

The Old City Hall nomination says the fort was founded on a bluff on the west bank of the Indian River in late 1837 by some accounts, or perhaps on the morning of January 2, 1838 according to an Army surgeon's journal, and that the troops named it for their commander, whose brother was Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth President (Old City Hall nomination, historical context). The Fort Pierce Site nomination records that nothing of the fort is visible today (Fort Pierce Site nomination). The Old Fort Park guide covers the fort site, its 1839 plan and its Army years.

Homesteaders came to the Indian River in the 1840s and again after the 1870s, and a trading settlement grew beside the river landing until the railway arrived in 1894.

According to the Old Fort Pierce City Hall nomination, the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 offered 160 acre homesteads, and the scattered pioneers of the 1840s used the ruins of the fort as a reference point in describing their claims (Old City Hall nomination, historical context). A trading post opened at the old fort site in 1871, and the land between Taylor Creek and Moore's Creek became Edgartown, the first residential neighborhood of what would be Fort Pierce. A general store with a dock reaching twelve hundred feet into the river followed, and in 1888 a post office opened in the store under the name Fort Pierce.

Before the railway, the Indian River settlements could be reached only by boat. The nomination calls Fort Pierce the eastern origin of the cattle drives along the route now designated the Florida Cracker Trail, which ended with the sale of cattle in Fort Myers for shipment to Cuba from the port of Punta Rassa, and says Henry Flagler's railway arrived in 1894 on its way south from Jacksonville, adding pineapple growing to fishing and cattle raising. The city's own Historical Lincoln Park page connects Edgartown to the history of the Lincoln Park neighborhood (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park).

Fort Pierce was incorporated on February 2, 1901, became the seat of the new St. Lucie County in 1905, and grew from about 300 pioneers to more than 45,000 residents, according to city and National Register sources.

The incorporation date, the 53 voters and the 1905 county seat come from the Old City Hall nomination, which adds that the Florida East Coast Railroad set up a division point in Fort Pierce, a county courthouse went up in 1909, and the 1914 high school long served as the only high school between Stuart and Melbourne. The electricity and utility rows come from the FPUA history page, which says voters approved a bond for an electric light plant at an election on December 5, 1911, and that citizens created the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority by referendum in 1972. The City of Fort Pierce sums up the long view on its About Fort Pierce page: incorporated in 1901, the city grew from 300 pioneers to over 45,000 residents and covers approximately 31 square miles.

The 1920s land boom brought an ocean inlet, a causeway, the Sunrise Theatre and a new City Hall, then the 1926 and 1928 hurricanes and the 1929 crash ended it, and World War II brought a Navy amphibious training base.

The Old City Hall nomination says the Fort Pierce ocean inlet was being dredged and scheduled to open in 1921, and more than 200 houses went up between 1921 and 1923 (Old City Hall nomination). By 1925 the causeway from downtown to the beach on Hutchinson Island was complete. Developments such as the city's own Venetian Island and Indrio, the form says, turned out to be sand castles when the market collapsed. The finished port gave Fort Pierce what the nomination calls the only important deep water harbor between Jacksonville and Miami, and the population fell under 5,000 in 1930 before rising past 6,000 in 1935.

The war years changed the town again. The same nomination records a State Farmer's Market opened in Fort Pierce in 1941, mainly to serve tomato growers, the Navy's choice of Fort Pierce as the site of an amphibious training base, and the first radio station on the air in 1946, with marinas, beaches and fishing drawing tourists and retirees after the war. The historic buildings guide covers the three downtown landmarks from this era that have National Register files.

Lincoln Park, one of the oldest Fort Pierce communities, was the center of African American business life along Avenue D in the 1950s and 1960s and was home to the Florida Highwaymen painters and the author Zora Neale Hurston.

The City of Fort Pierce describes Avenue D in its heyday as St. Lucie County's center for African American owned shops, restaurants, businesses and a theater, and points visitors to Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks Heritage Trail and to the Highwaymen Heritage Trail, which features a group of 26 African American artists from Fort Pierce who were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004 (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park).

The state's Hall of Fame entry for Zora Neale Hurston says a family friend from Eatonville invited her to live rent-free in a small house in Fort Pierce, where she moved in 1957, and that she was buried in an unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery; in 1973 the author Alice Walker travelled to Fort Pierce, found what is believed to be the gravesite and had a headstone installed (Florida Artists Hall of Fame, Zora Neale Hurston). The city's Lincoln Park page says Hurston spent many years in Lincoln Park, including the final years of her life, and places her grave at the Garden of Heavenly Rest (Historical Lincoln Park).

The City of Fort Pierce says the Treasure Coast is named after the 1715 sinking of a Spanish treasure fleet, and one of those ships, the Urca de Lima, lies 200 yards offshore of Jack Island Park in St. Lucie County.

The city's About page describes Fort Pierce as one of the oldest communities on Florida's east coast, on a coast named for the famed sinking of a Spanish treasure fleet in 1715 (About Fort Pierce). The National Register nomination for the Urca de Lima, site 8SL00024, places that 1715 fleet wreck 200 yards offshore of Jack Island Park, north of the Fort Pierce Inlet in St. Lucie County (Urca de Lima nomination); the Treasure Coast Urca de Lima guide covers the preserve itself.

The historic buildings guide sits under this Fort Pierce history section, and the Old Fort Park guide in the parks section covers the Seminole War fort site.

For the National Register files on Old City Hall at 315 Avenue A and the Old Post Office at 500 Orange Avenue, and for how a Fort Pierce owner seeks local historic designation, the historic buildings guide is the place to start (Old City Hall nomination). For the fort itself, its 1839 plan and what stands on the bluff today, the Old Fort Park guide follows the Fort Pierce Site nomination. Related Fort Pierce guides outside this section cover the Sunrise Theatre, downtown Fort Pierce and the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority, whose 1912 power plant and 1972 founding appear in the timeline above.