How the Treasure Coast Got Its Name — Sebastian, Florida

Sebastian sits at the northern end of the Treasure Coast, and the name points straight offshore. In 1715 a Spanish treasure fleet carrying gold and silver from the Americas was wrecked by a hurricane along the barrier island south of Sebastian Inlet, scattering cargo across the shallows of what are now Indian River and St. Lucie Counties. For more than two centuries the wrecks were largely forgotten. When salvors began bringing up coins and gold in the mid twentieth century, the stretch of coast south of Sebastian Inlet acquired a new nickname built on that cargo.

The name is younger than most residents might assume. A 2011 essay broadcast on WQCS, the public radio station in Fort Pierce, reported that it was well known that Spanish galleons carrying gold, silver and jewels were wrecked offshore in 1715, but that the term Treasure Coast did not catch on until the 1960s, when it started appearing in the media and in the names of local businesses. Before that, the essay notes, this stretch of Florida oceanfront was for a while called the Tropical Coast, a label that fit many other places as well.

The WQCS essay traced the name to a newspaper office in Vero Beach, south of Sebastian in Indian River County. Clues led to John J. Schumann Jr., who was publisher of the Press Journal in Vero Beach before his family sold the newspaper to Scripps. Schumann said he thinks he and his editor, Harry Schultz, popularized the term after treasure hunters found gold and silver from the Spanish fleet, a discovery that drew national media attention to the Indian River County beaches.

His reasoning was geographic. Schumann said that to the south was the Gold Coast, and to the north was the Space Coast, so this should be the Treasure Coast. With established names already claimed to the north and south, the coast around Sebastian, Vero Beach and Fort Pierce took its label from the 1715 wrecks lying off its own beaches.

The newspaper behind the name was a Vero Beach institution. According to the Indian River Guardian, Schumann's father and grandfather, who moved from Indiana, started the newspaper the Vero Beach Journal in 1926; it later merged with the Vero Press to create the Press Journal, which had a daily circulation of 33,000 when it was sold to Scripps in 1997. A local historical society screened a video interview with Schumann in Vero Beach in March 2025.

The treasure is the cargo of the 1715 Fleet. The Florida Division of Historical Resources marker for the Site of Survivors' and Salvagers' Camp, placed in 1974 south of Sebastian Inlet on A1A, states that late in July, 1715, a hurricane destroyed a fleet of eleven or possibly twelve homeward bound merchant ships carrying cargoes of gold and silver coinage and other valuable items from the American colonies to Spain. About 1500 men, women, and children who survived reached the shore and made their camp along the barrier island near the place where the fleet's flagship had sunk.

The Associated Press dates the storm to July 31, 1715, and reports that over the years millions of dollars in gold coins from the 1715 Fleet have been found by salvagers and treasure hunters in a coastal area stretching from Melbourne to Fort Pierce, a span that runs past Sebastian Inlet and Wabasso. The National Park Service adds that although Spain recovered some treasure, the sunken ships lay forgotten for more than 200 years until modern treasure hunters discovered several of them, the rediscovery that eventually gave the region around Sebastian its name.

The rediscovery came in stages. Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2020 that the first modern salvage expedition to the 1715 Treasure Fleet took place in 1928, and that between 1932 and 1964 Florida issued more than 50 salvage licenses, including one granted to treasure hunter Kip Wagner. Wagner recounted his team's discovery of artifacts worth an estimated $6 million in the January 1965 issue of National Geographic, including a 50-pound lump of silver pieces of eight, gold doubloons, jewelry and weapons.

That national coverage is the context the WQCS essay gives for the name: the discovery attracted the attention of the national media, and the Vero Beach paper supplied a label for the coast where the 1715 coins were coming ashore. By the end of the 1960s, according to WQCS, Treasure Coast was appearing in the media and in local business names, replacing the older Tropical Coast as the label for the Sebastian and Vero Beach shoreline.

The nickname itself has no legal boundary, but the regional body that carries it places its northern edge at Sebastian Inlet. WQCS noted in 2011 that the Spanish ships went down off what is now Indian River County and St. Lucie County, and that Martin County was brought under the Treasure Coast umbrella as well, extending the name beyond the counties off which the 1715 ships sank.

Florida law uses the name for a planning region. Florida Statutes section 186.512 designates the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council for Indian River, Martin, Palm Beach, and St. Lucie Counties. The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, which describes itself as bringing communities together since 1976, gives its region a total shoreline of 110 miles from Boca Raton in the south stretching northwards to the Sebastian Inlet, placing Sebastian and Indian River County at the top of the statutory Treasure Coast.

The name is written into recent state markers in the Sebastian area. The 2020 Florida historical marker for the A.B. Michael (Wabasso) Bridge on County Road 510 ends by noting that this bridge leads directly to the beaches of the Treasure Coast where remnants of the 1715 Spanish Silver Fleet are still found. The bridge crosses the Indian River Lagoon from Wabasso, in northern Indian River County, to the community of Orchid on the barrier island.

The coins still surface. Smithsonian reported in March 2020 that 22 silver coins from the 1715 wrecks washed up on Florida's Treasure Coast after a February 22, 2020 storm, when heavy surf moved sand and left metal artifacts in shallow water by the beach. In October 2025 the AP reported that more than 1,000 silver and gold coins had been recovered that summer off a stretch of Florida known as the Treasure Coast, by a salvage company named 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels LLC, continuing the link between the 1715 cargo and the coast from Sebastian Inlet southward.