The Melbourne bone beds, a series of deposits along the east coast, contain important Pleistocene fossil remains of extinct animals. The towns of Melbourne Beach and Indialantic can be reached across the lagoon via the Melbourne Causeway. Inc. town, 1887; city, 1913. Pop. (1990) city, 59,646; Melbourne-Titusville-Palm Bay MSA, 398,978.


BRADENTON, FLORIDA

Bradenton has been the seat of Manatee county since 1903. It is located in southwestern Florida (U.S) on the south bank of the Manatee River, near its mouth at Tampa Bay. Hernando de Soto is believed to have landed nearby, probably at Shaw's Point, in 1539 (an event commemorated by a national memorial and an annual pageant). The first permanent settler was Joseph Braden, who planted sugar and built a "castle" (1854), remnants of which survive.

The community developed as a winter resort and market processing center for farm produce (citrus, winter vegetables, and flowers) and livestock and was incorporated in 1903. In 1947 it merged with Manatee (founded 1842), its neighbour to the east, to form the city of Bradenton. Its economy became more diversified with an influx of light industries. South Florida Museum and Bishop Planetarium, near the Green Bridge, display Indian artifacts and marine life. Gamble Mansion (Judah P. Benjamin Memorial, built 1842-45) at nearby Ellenton is Florida's chief Confederate shrine. One of the main industries in Bradenton is Tropicana. Manatee Junior College (1957) which is now Manatee Community College is in Bradenton. Pop. (1990) city, 43,769; Sarasota-Bradenton MSA, 489,483; (1998 est.) city, 47,049; Sarasota-Bradenton MSA, 543,082.


WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA

City, seat (1909) of Palm Beach county, southeastern Florida, U.S. It lies along Lake Worth (a lagoon, part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway), opposite Palm Beach. The area, homesteaded in 1880 by Irving Henry, was developed after the arrival in 1894 of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad. Using the town as a workers' base and transfer point, Flagler developed a winter resort across the lagoon at Palm Beach.

Henry Morrison Flagler Henry Morrison Flagler lived two ives. The first: a ruthless businessman who went from humble beginnings to the world of the Rockefellers. The second: a man who paved the way for tourism as he built the east coast of Florida with a renewed sense of compassion. Born in 1830 in Hopewell, N.Y., the man with the bushy mustache and hair parted down the middle was one of the state's most glamorous developers -- and the namesake of the state's 53rd county. He was also a man who changed his course in life, a process that began after his wife, Mary, died in 1881 and left him with a 10-year-old son. Flagler responded by distancing himself from the Standard Oil Co. he founded with John D. Rockefeller and spending less time in its New York offices. At 53, he visited St. Augustine and found a cause. Believing the state needed better transportation and hotels, he set about the task of building both. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad stretched from St. Augustine to Key West, complementing his string of luxury lodgings that included the Breakers in Palm Beach County. Flagler constantly stretched his credit rating to the limit. He saw his role in Florida as a paternalistic lord, willing to pay the occasional bribe so he could control his own destiny. In 1905, he began constructing what would be called "Flagler's Folly," a railroad that would span seven miles of open water on its way to Key West. Between 3,000 and 4,000 men plagued by mosquitoes, sand flies and hurricanes built the bridge in seven years. Three times -- in 1906, 1909 and 1910 -- storms nearly halted the project. Hundreds of workers died in the 1906 storm. But Flagler persisted, and the railroad was dedicated in 1912. It proved to be a failure, though, and never earned the expected revenue before it was destroyed by a 1935 Labor Day hurricane. Flagler died in 1913 at age 83 after falling on the marble stairs of Whitehall, the palace he built for his third wife in Palm Beach. In an interview seven years before his death, Flagler tried to explain his urge to build on success that eventually would be chronicled in Palm Beach's Henry Morrison Flagler Museum: "I have always been contented, but I have never been satisfied."

When Henry Morrison Flagler came here in 1893, he called the Lake Worth region "a veritable paradise." And then he had a vision: He could turn Palm Beach into the most famous resort in the world. He would build a commercial city across the lake for his workers." That city was West Palm Beach.

Flagler had the city laid out in November 1893, naming the streets for native plants. Running east and west were Althea, Banyan, Clematis, Datura, Evernia and Fern streets. North-south avenues were Lantana, Myrtle, Narcissus, Olive, Poinsettia (now Dixie Highway), Rosemary, Sapodilla and Tamarind.

On Nov. 5, 1894, 77 to 1 residents of the little town voted to incorporate the city of West Palm Beach. It soon became a bustling frontier town, with storefronts along Clematis and Narcissus streets and saloons lining Banyan Street.

Banyan Street became as wild and well-known as any raucous town in the West. It was so notorious that famed anti-alcohol crusader Carry Nation visited in 1904, wielding her Bible. That didn't help much, but soon the new churches did, as did the new neighborhoods, many of which sprang up in the Florida land boom of the early 1920's.

From 1920 to 1927, the city's population quadrupled, and everything grew: the schools, the farming and sugar businesses in the Glades, the hotels and theaters. One January 1925 newspaper, 150 pages fat, contained 12 full-page advertisements, in a row, for developments.

"Ten minutes to half an hour in any spot in the state would convince the most skeptical eyes and ears that something is taking place in Florida to which the history of developments, booms, inrushes, speculation, investments, yields no parallel," The New York Times would observe in the spring of 1925. But the meteoric rise brought a terrible fall. Nervous speculators, in a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, began to take the money and run. Then came the killer hurricanes of 1926 and 1928.

In one awful year, from 1929 to 1930, West Palm Beach's total property value dropped more than half. By 1935 it was down to a little more than its pre-boom 1920 value. West Palm Beach fought back, but it took years.

By 1950, buoyed by military dollars during World War II and an influx of veterans moving south, West Palm Beach was ready to enter a new era of progress.

The city's total property value rose from a rock-bottom $18 million in 1935 to $72 million in 1949 and continued to surge year by year until it was $147.5 million by 1962 - an eight-fold increase in less than 30 years. The metropolitan area was the fourth fastest growing area in the country between 1950 and 1960. Development spread west past Military Trail and south to Lake Clarke Shores. Ads in the Palm Beach Post touted "new prestige neighborhoods" of concrete block homes in "suburban community villages." What could be finer than a three-bedroom, swimming pool home with central air - for just $14,950? And then, to top it all off, a set of rabbit ears and a television.

The first TV station - WIRK, Channel 21 - came to town in 1953, and channels 5 and 12 followed a few years later. Growth remained the watchword for West Palm Beach.

West Palm Beach of 2000 has lived through a boom, a bust, a war right off the shore, another boom, a recession - and now, perhaps the greatest challenge of all, the revitalization of downtown.

The Centennial Square fountain, City Place and the new walkways of Narcissus and Clematis are designed to bring people back downtown, and to remind them of the awesome beauty the pioneers first found here so long ago.

The city is the home of the University of Palm Beach (1926), Northwood University (a business college), and Palm Beach Atlantic College (1968). Port Palm Beach, one of the busiest ports in the state, is immediately to the north. To the west is Lion Country Safari, a 640-acre (260-hectare) preserve where African animals roam freely amid surroundings similar to their native habitats. Inc. 1894. Pop. (1990) city, 67,643; West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Delray Beach.