The Town of Juno Beach is on a barrier island along the Atlantic coastal ridge, created when the Intracoastal Waterway was dredged in the late 1800s; the property within today’s town boundaries was acquired in sections over many years.
The original US 1 (now A1A) was built along the ocean in 1927. Five years later, the first residents of present Juno Beach, Oscar and Hulda Erikson, built the Juno Beach Cottages along A1A for rental to tourists. After World War II, James Watson started a rental trailer park nearby, which later became the Ocean Terrace Motel.
The road that would become Ellison Wilson Road was built in 1928 and later named for a local resident who died in World War II. Walter Travers’ Rolling Green Corporation owned 80 acres on the Intracoastal Waterway, where houses were added slowly; John D. MacArthur’s Belvedere Development bought out Travers in the late 1960s.
In 1946 Bessemer Properties, Inc. bought most of the land east of A1A from Seminole Golf Club north to New Palm Beach Heights, platted by C. H. Nelson, Jr. in 1916 but undeveloped until the 1950s. Parts of New Palm Beach Heights would become Donald Ross Road, A1A, and Surfside Park.
Bessemer Properties filed the Plat of Juno Beach, with large lots, in 1948, and improved the town by dredging a marsh to create Pelican Lake and building the original 500-foot Juno Pier. Residents formed the Juno Beach Association and incorporated the Town of Juno Beach in 1953, when the population was about 130 year-round residents, which swelled to 1,500 during the winter season.
Residential development in Juno Beach during the 1950s can be seen south of Donald Ross Road between US 1 and A1A, where the Juno Beach Garden Club named the streets in 1958 for planets and Roman gods and goddesses. Also in the ‘50s, present-day US Highway 1 and Donald Ross Road were built, and Ellison Wilson Road was extended northward.