Riviera Beach 55+ Communities

In 1513, when Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León arrived in South Florida, he found a prosperous native community of around 20,000 people.  The land where Palm Beach County sits today was mainly home to the Ais, the Jaega, the Jobe, the Mayaimi, and the Tequesta.  The settlements found by European explorers in the 16th century are all thought to have lineal descent from ancient tribes and cultures, including the Belle Glade, dating back to 1000 BC.  The Ais, the Jaega, and the Jobe spanned east from Lake Okeechobee up the northeast coastline.  The Mayaimi lived in the Belle Glade Area or Okeechobee Basin.  Southeast down the coast, the Tequesta primarily reined in the Everglades area.

Studies indicate the Ais and Jaega likely called the land where Riviera Beach sits home, building an enormous sandbank, plus two mounds from shells and other materials.  Centuries of war, disease brought from Europe, and enslavement wrecked the native tribes of Florida, and by the end of the Third Seminole War in 1858, there were only a couple hundred left.  In 1882, Allen E. Heyser purchased 80 acres of lakefront land, including a 30ft native shell mound, from current day 10th st to 12 st in Riviera Beach.  He married Mattie Spencer, daughter of the postmaster in Lake Worth, six years later.  Cited as the first residents of Riviera Beach, the couple began building a modest residential home on the land.  The two continued to expand on the ground, and the home grew into a hree-story building with 20 rooms named the Oak Lawn House, the name inspired by five colossal oak trees on the property.  Mr. Heyser sent an application to Washington D.C. and received approval for a local post office.  Mattie Spencer Heyser ran the post office out of the hotel, which opened in February of 1889.

Thought to be inspired by the French Riviera, in 1893, the Heysers renamed the hotel and post office “Riviera.”  In 1901, Charles N. Newcomb purchased the hotel after the Dade County seat switched back to Miami, and the Heysers returned to Miami.  Newcomb’s upgrades and expansion of the hotel were so impressive, regular visitors included many notable names, including railroad tycoon Henry Flagler.  (For more information on Flagler’s impact on South Florida development, check out our West Palm Beach history section.)  Intending to shape Riviera Beach into a resort community, in 1913, Newcomb purchased and sold around 30 lots.  Other notable developers such as G.W. Bingham, the Perry family, William Taylor, and George Currie were making things happen in other parts of the city.  Local businesses began to pop up, a grocery store and a gas pipe, the city began to grow.

Additionally, from around 1906 on, a micro-community of anglers and their families began forming on the south end of Singer Island.  The land became locally referred to as Inlet city, and since the majority of the residents were Islanders from the Bahamas, residents became referred to as “conchs.”  When the community moved to the mainland in 1919, Riviera swiftly became the leading seafood supplier on the east coast, supplying notable businesses such as New York’s Fulton’s Fish Market.  Within a few years of moving to the mainland, around seventy-five commercial fishing families called Rivera Beach home.  In 1976, A History of Riviera Beach, Florida, was published by the Bicentennial Commission, providing in-depth details about the origins of this extraordinary land in South Florida.