Pompano’s Lifeline

For much of its history, Pompano Beach was an agricultural town; its wealth came from the soil. But the growth and development of the community was as dependent on the railroad as it was on farming. Without the railroad our history would have been dramatically different. In fact, there may not have been a Pompano Beach at all.

In the 1890s the United States was reaching the point that few areas could be characterized as “beyond the frontier.” South Florida, however, was one of them. Isolated at the end of a three-hundred mile peninsula, with foreboding climate and terrain, the southeastern edge of Florida attracted only a few hardy settlers.

All this would begin to change when a northern businessman resettled in St. Augustine and began to build a railroad south along Florida’s east coast.

Henry M. Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York in 1830. Before he was forty years old, he was a partner of John D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Company, and was one of the nation’s business elites.

He first came to Florida as a winter resident in 1878 to seek a healthy climate for his wife. Following her death Flagler returned to Florida and by 1885 was actively involved in the development of businesses in St. Augustine.

He also purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad, which would become his Florida East Coast Railway. In the ensuing years, he extended the railroad south, reaching Palm Beach by 1894. Two years later he extended the line to Miami.

All along the rail line small settlements were established; most of them were farming communities. In the Pompano Beach area, the few pioneers who had arrived before the railroad, and who had settled around what is today known as Lake Santa Barbara, eventually moved farther inland where the town was growing alongside the tracks.

The Florida East Coast Railway was the means by which people could travel to this area, but it was also provided the transportation network for getting the tomatoes, beans, peppers and other agricultural produce to the national markets.

In Pompano’s earliest years, the residents depended on the railroad for nearly all their goods and services. For instance, there was no local source for ice. Thus, meat had to be eaten right away as without ice, it was not possible to keep it fresh. Fresh meat would be ordered from West Palm Beach, where merchants would pack it with a block of ice in sawdust and send it on the train south to Pompano.

In those early years, if a Pompano resident was injured or became sick enough to require medical help, the word went out and Dr. Tom Kennedy would take the northbound train from Fort Lauderdale to tend to the patient.

The FEC Railway station was the de facto municipal building – it was there that the residents of Pompano gathered to vote in favor of incorporation in 1908. Over the years, Pompano would have two FEC stations. The original station was architecturally similar to other small stations the FEC built along its line, and was located alongside the tracks at about NE 1st Street. The second station was constructed in the mid 1920s. It was larger, built of concrete block and was located a little bit north, at 226 North Dixie Highway.

By the middle of the 1920s Pompano’s downtown included a bank, two hotels, several general stores and restaurants in addition to other businesses catering to the farming community. During the harvest months, the area would be jammed with farmers, brokers and shippers, selling and purchasing the winter vegetable crops.

Until the 1940s, the FEC tracks in downtown Pompano were lined with “sheds” where the vegetables were readied for market. A 1939 magazine article describes the packing shed of local farmer Bud Lyons:

“Bud Lyons' . . . packing plant in Pompano is where his beans are cleaned, graded, packed and loaded into refrigerator cars the same day they are picked. Here, electric conveyor belts first carry the beans under a powerful blower which removes any dust or soil from them, then on between rows of quick-fingered women, who throw out any broken, bruised or blighted beans, and sort them into two qualities. At the end of each belt, the graded beans are dumped into bushel hampers. Men nail on lids, paste on labels, and place the hampers on an electric conveyor which takes them to waiting refrigerator cars or trucks. This season [1938-39], Bud Lyons expects to ship between 500 and 600 carloads of beans northward, each containing 600 bushels.”

When the State Farmers Market opened west of town for the 1939-40 growing season, the FEC built a spur track to the new market and rerouted the long trains of refrigerated cars away from the downtown.

Still, until after World War II, the railroad provided the most efficient means for most individuals to travel into and out of Pompano. But with the post-war improvement of the nation’s highways and the greater reliability of automobile transportation, passenger traffic on the FEC declined.

By the 1960s the FEC was actively seeking to get out of the passenger business, and when the operating unions called a strike against the railroad in January, 1963, that was all the excuse that was needed to discontinue passenger service. To emphasize the point, the FEC demolished Pompano Beach’s passenger station in 1968.

Ironically, it was at about the same time that Pompano was losing its agricultural hinterland. Where there had once been vast acreage of winter vegetables, by the 1960s there were now communities by the names of Lighthouse Point, Margate and Coral Springs.

In the decades since then, the railroad affects most residents primarily as they sit in their cars, waiting for a passing train to clear the tracks. Perhaps the impatient drivers should use the delay to remember that were it not for the railroad, they might not be here today.

Courtesy of the Pompano Beach Historical Society. All rights reserved.