The Other Side of Lake Worth

Albert W. Robert was Flagler’s first representative on Lake Worth in 1892, buying parcels of real estate in 1892 that Flagler had chosen on both sides of the lake. Later Robert worked from an office on Clematis Street, where he was succeeded by Wallace R. Moses. In a 1962 interview (on file at the HSPBC), Moses’s daughter, Sara (Moses) Dean, states that her mother named the original streets: Althea, Banyan, Clematis, Datura, Evernia, and Fern. The avenues ran alphabetically too, from Lantana on the east to Water on the west, although most of them were called “Street” for some time. Clematis was called “Avenue” until the 1920s. It started out with two ribbons of oyster shell as pavement, harvested from the Loxahatchee River and Indian shell mounds in Jupiter. Soon the streets within three blocks of the lakefront were paved. Daisy Butler Lyman recalled in a 1962 interview how the workers would grade the road by pounding the shells down with posts: “That’s about all they had to level ‘em off with.” On February 4, 1894, the town lots were offered for sale at an auction held in the ballroom of the Royal Poinciana Hotel.