The first people of the land we now know as Lake Worth were the Jaega tribe according to
Palm Beach County Native American history. It wasn’t until after 1842, the end of the Second Seminole War, that the portion of land began to take shape towards today’s Lake Worth Beach.
In the late 19th century, former slaves Fannie A. Jones James and her husband Samuel James settled in the area with a homestead of around 186 acres. The two ran the Jewell Post Office from 1889 to 1903, which managed the post for the small population between Lantana and West Palm Beach. With Samuel’s passing in 1910, Fannie sold most of their land to Palm Beach Farms Company, owned by brothers Harold and Frederick Bryant and William Greenwood. The name of the post office went from Jewell to Lucerne. Word spread throughout the United States and Canada, 5 acres of land in the Everglades for $250, $10 down, then $10 a month. As an incentive, Palm Beach Farms Company added a free 25 by 25-foot lot on the shores of Lake Worth, assigned by a drawing in April 1912. Inevitably the purchased acres flooded, and the new settlers shifted to their free lake lots.
By the fall of 1912, developers had laid out 55 miles of streets with 7,000 lots and a school. Upon finding another post office named Lucerne, the name changed to Lake Worth after Colonel William Jenkins Worth, noted for ending the Second Seminole War. That December, there were approximately 308 residents and 125 homes.
From here, the city benefited from the 1920s Florida land boom and continued to grow. The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, one of the deadliest storms in recorded history, wreaked havoc along the southeast coast of Florida. The storm did massive damage to the infrastructure of Lake Worth, and the aftermath spiraled into the Great Depression. The city went through a decade or so moratorium, where growth took a halt, and residents and city leaders focused on rebuilding. In the mid-1940s, after WWII, Lake Worth started to bounce back. Development began again, and the growth continued into the 21 century. In 2013 the city opened the
Lake Worth Beach Casino Building & Beach Complex, reminiscent of the
original 1920 architect. Lake Worth became Lake Worth Beach in the spring of 2019 when residents voted to add the “beach” into the name.
