Waldo Sexton — Vero Beach, Florida

Waldo Sexton was a Vero Beach land salesman, citrus grower and self-taught builder whose buildings still define the look of the old resort town. A New York Times travel story of December 12, 1971 opened with him: few men have left their mark on a town so strongly as Waldo Sexton, who built four of this community's most famous tourist establishments, mostly out of driftwood and other bits of unusual lumber. Those four were the Driftwood Inn, the Ocean Grill, the Patio restaurant and Caprino's, and the Times noted that he had already been dead several years.

The list grew with the retelling. A 2018 program notice in the Indian River Guardian described Sexton as the innovative developer of Vero Beach landmarks such as McKee Botanical Gardens, the Driftwood Inn, Ocean Grill, Patio Restaurant and Szechuan Palace Restaurant. That program, held at the Emerson Center on January 11, 2018 as part of the Florida Humanities Series, brought his descendants together to talk about the man the notice called perhaps the most notable patriarch of Vero Beach.

Sexton arrived in the Indian River Farms era. According to a July 28, 2025 history column in Citrus Industry magazine, the Indian River Farms Company built the Sleepy Eye Lodge to house visiting land buyers, and one of its guests was Waldo Sexton, who sold agricultural equipment to local farmers. While at the lodge he bought 120 acres from Indian River Farms Co. and then started selling plots of land for the company that had drained and platted Vero.

Farming came next. The same column says that within a few years Sexton was raising cattle, growing citrus, running a grove maintenance company and a cooperative packinghouse, and that he helped found the Indian River Citrus League. In other words, Sexton's first Vero Beach career was in groves, cattle and Indian River Farms land, years before the gardens, inns and restaurants that made his name.

McKee Jungle Gardens was Sexton's first tourist venture and the one with the widest reach. The McKee Botanical Garden history says land developers Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton purchased the 80-acre tropical hammock in 1922 with the intention of cultivating citrus, then decided the land was too special to disturb. The Cultural Landscape Foundation dates the purchase of the hammock along the Indian River to 1929. Both accounts agree that landscape architect William Lyman Phillips shaped it into a public garden that opened in 1932 as McKee Jungle Gardens.

The state historical marker on U.S. 1 names McKee Gardens as founded in 1932 by Vero Beach pioneer Waldo Sexton and Cleveland industrialist Arthur G. McKee, and records an aviary, resident monkeys and the Cathedral of Palms. At its height the garden attracted 100,000 visitors annually, but it closed in 1976. When the surviving 18 acres reopened as McKee Botanical Garden on November 18, 2001, the garden says several restored architectural treasures such as The Hall of Giants and Spanish Kitchen had been brought back to Sexton's original vision, and TCLF notes that unique architectural pieces collected by Waldo Sexton were preserved during the restoration.

On the Vero Beach barrier island Sexton built from salvage and memory. The Times wrote in 1971 that the Driftwood Inn, built in 1932, was for years one of but a few structures on the beach, and that it was made of bleached driftwood and lumber from a demolished barn. Carpenters put it together not from plans but from Sexton's verbal instructions, given on the spot. Florida Trend reported in 2004 that Waldo's, the restaurant at the Driftwood, started out as the kitchen of what Sexton originally built as a four-room cottage for his family.

The Ocean Grill followed to the south. Florida Trend says Sexton had crews clearing the right-of-way for A1A from the Sebastian Inlet all the way to the south county line, that they built the road leading to the dune-top site, and that he built the restaurant there in 1941. The Times traced it to a hamburger and chocolate cake stand. During World War II, while the naval air station operated at the Vero Beach airport, Florida Trend says Sexton made the Ocean Grill into an officers club.

On the mainland, Sexton's best known building is the Patio. Vero News reported on March 11, 2022 that the building in old downtown Vero was built in the 1930s by iconic Vero Beach developer Waldo Sexton, who also built the Ocean Grill and Driftwood Inn on the island. In its heyday as The Patio Restaurant it was a popular hangout for Dodger players during spring training at Dodgertown and for diners year-round. Florida Trend adds that Sexton furnished it from the warehouses of material left over from the Ocean Grill, originally as an ice cream parlor.

The Patio stayed in the family long after Sexton. Vero News reported that the building had been in the Sexton family for more than 80 years when it sold for $600,000 in a deal that closed on February 17, 2022, after the restaurant business had faltered and several later tenants had come and gone on that stretch of U.S. 1 in Vero Beach.

Sexton's buildings share a method: buy old fittings by the lot and build them in. The 1971 Times article lists pieces of a boat, cannon from Spanish ships sunk offshore, part of the railing from the old Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach, Della Robbia ironwork from the Dodge estate in Palm Beach and bells, bells, bells at the Driftwood Inn. It reports that the paneled Patio restaurant has a buffet and tiled patio that came from the Stotesbury estate in Palm Beach, and that the beachfront Ocean Grill held Tiffany lamps and ship artifacts. Florida Trend notes stained glass from the Royal Poinciana Hotel and from Bradley's Casino at Waldo's, and says much of the Ocean Grill's wood and wrought iron came from auctions in the 1930s.

The results drew both affection and puzzlement in Vero Beach. The Times quoted a long-time resident who ranked the Driftwood as the oddest place anyone could see, and it described Sexton as a man who was not afraid to render an opinion and never hesitated to embroider a story. Florida Trend noted in 2004 that Waldo's was included on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal listing for a Vero Beach building that grew out of a family cottage.