Margretta and Hannibal Pierce, named Hypoluxo Island in 1872 after learning from Seminole Indians that Hypoluxo meant, “water all around, no get out.” The pioneers on Lake Worth applied the name to the south end of the lake, Lillie Elder Pierce Voss wrote in 1896: “Hypoluxo formerly included everything south of Captain Dimick’s place [in Palm Beach] down as far as Orange Grove station [near present Delray Beach].”
The Hypoluxo Post Office was established for the community at the south end of Lake Worth in May 1886 at the home of postmaster Andrew Walton Garnett (1865-1940). When the mail route interfered with his farming, Garnett turned his duties over to Charles W. “Charlie” Pierce, his assistant, who ran it from his home on Hypoluxo Island.
Garnett and two other Kentucky bachelors—James Edward “Ed” Hamilton (1855-1887) and James William “Jim” Porter (1859-1937)—had become the first residents of today’s town of Hypoluxo in 1884. The friends bought adjoining five-acre properties between present US 1 and Lake Worth, across from the Pierce homestead. They shared a house on Garnett’s property, the middle one, where Park Lane East is now.
Today’s Town of Hypoluxo, incorporated in 1955, consists of .6 square miles on the west side of Lake Worth; none of it is on Hypoluxo Island. The town bills itself as the home of the Barefoot Mailman. Two of them lived there, Ed Hamilton, who died on the job in 1887, and Andrew W. Garnett.