It is absolutely beautiful outside. There is not a cloud in the sky, humidity is low, the temperature is perfect, and for all the wading birds and fishes “spring has sprung.” They are excitedly searching for food, but there is little to be found. In the past week, salinity has dropped like a rock and a swift current of filth is pushing towards the St. Luice Inlet.
Boating? Are you kidding? I guess you can, but don’t let your kids swim in the water. Dive the nearshore reefs? I don’t think so!
These aerial photographs were taken just eight days after Lake Okeechobee discharges began into the St. Lucie River. The Army Corps of Engineers with the agreement of their local sponsor, the South Florida Water Management District, endorsed the high level discharges though S-80 to begin on 2-17-24.
Today’s photos were taken yesterday, 2-25-24, around 4pm, by Ed Lippisch and Jay Knobel. I am sharing all photographs for purposes of reference and documentation. The fight goes on as it has for 100 years. Shine the light.
Video
~FOLLOW ON Todd Thurlow’s website eyeonlakeo that now shows SALINITY.
~ACOE’s schedule to be repeated unless changed and reassessed each week. I am also including their announcement given to the people on Valentine’s Day.
~ A tidbit from our upcoming book, A Pictorial History of Palm City, Florida, by Sandra Thurlow & Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch
One of early Palm City’s most interesting characters is John S. Danforth. He was a true “man’s man,” kind of like Ernest Hemingway. Danforth was a writer, a hunter, an avid outdoorsman, and really an entrepreneur. Today, there remains a creek, among other landmarks still holding his name.
According to my mother, John Danforth started modestly with a floating cabin that eventually became one of the earliest hunting lodges in the country, “Camp Caribou.” It added to his reputation as a “knowledgeable and charismatic sportsman’s host and guide.” This success led him to leave Maine in 1892 and with his friends bring a “floating hotel” to the shores of the St. Luice River where Palm City would be born.
The floating hotel in Maine as photographed before its journey to the St. Lucie River. Thurlow collection.
Dansforth chose to came to the St. Lucie region for its wildlife, “endless” hunting, and other opportunities lying within an untouched wilderness of slash pine forests, palmetto, river, slough and ponds; a perfect habitat for deer, bears, panthers, turkeys, hogs, raccoons, flying squirrels, birds, small fur-bearing mammals, fish and critters of all kinds!
This 1912 Florida Photographic Concern photo of the pinewoods of Palm City Farms was taken 20 years after John Danforth first came to the area in 1892. West of the St. Lucie River was a remote wilderness full of wildlife.
Danforth made friends with the Seminole Indians especially famous Tom Tiger, leader of the Gopher Clan. They hunted the region of the St. Luice as well as going deeper into the lower Everglades. Danforth wrote about these experiences in widely distributed hunting magazines. He wrote because he loved it and to attract others to this St. Lucie/Palm City paradise and gateway to Lake Okeechobee and the inner Everglades.
Even though as an avid animal lover it breaks my heart, I am going to include Danforth’s article that will be in my mother and my upcoming book because it is important documentation. It is entitled “Two Christmas Hunts.” It is written about Danforth’s hunting experience with the goal to kill a panther as led by Tom Tiger. The article appeared in “Shooting and Fishing” No. 9 on December 14, 1899 and is a testament to those times. A time when South Florida, including Palm city was a wildlife wilderness.
~John Danforth is buried beside his loving wife, Sarah, in Fernhill Cemetery, Highway 76, Stuart, Florida.
Yesterday, on Valentine’s Day, the estuaries did not receive sweet news. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, working to manage water together with their local sponsor, the South Florida Water Management District, announced that they will begin significant discharges (1800+/- cfs) from Lake Okeechobee (16.37 ft.) beginning Saturday, 2-17-24.
The aerials below taken by my husband, Ed Lippisch, on 2-14-24 around noon, 30 minutes before high tide, can serve as a baseline for comparison as our waters decline.
Presently, there is no representation on the South Florida Water Management District governing board as far as a traditional sitting Martin County representative. Appointed in 2019 by Governor DeSantis, I was removed in June 2023, really due to the power of the President of the Senate and those influencing her, for comments I made at a governing board meeting in February of 2022 in response to Senate Bill 2508, a bill undermining the District, water control, and the EAA Reservoir. In the the following months, I was not reappointed, as I could have been, by Governor DeSantis, nor was anyone else. Thus the seat sits open at this critical time. I believe I was removed not just because of my comments, but because of my knowledge and my record for speaking the truth. By a long and cruel silence we are being punished.
I will continue to advocate with the pen and with my voice for the St. Lucie River as I have since 2008 when I first became a Town of Sewall’s Point Commissioner and began to learn the dark history of Florida’s water policy. I want to thank the thousands of people and the many organizations who have helped in this battle. We must continue to “shine the light” and change water policy for the better as we have done and will continue to do. As we know, it’s a long and rocky ride.
~Jacqui
A not very full C-44 Reservoir, Indiantown, FL2-14-24 SLR/IRL at St. Luice Inlet. Ed Lippisch.
A few of the ACOE Periodic Scientist Call slides 2-14-24 that I screenshot
~ A tidbit from our upcoming book, A Pictorial History of Palm City, Florida, by Sandra Thurlow & Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch
Palm City Post Office in the slash pine wilderness, c. 1914. Thurlow/Ricou Collection.
“You’ve got mail.”
In Palm City, in 1914, no one would have imagined email, texts, or cell phones. “Mail” meant a handwritten letter inside an envelope, one that may have been sent from very far away. One from a dear family member or an old friend. One about business opportunities. Having a post office was very important.
George Washington Jones signed the application for the Palm City Post Office on April 14, 1914. It was located inside his general merchandise store near Palmetto Street that later became Martin Downs Boulevard. Mr. Jones was postmaster, a very prestigious and important position in the growing community.
George Washington stamp, 1914. U.S. Post Office
It has been said that: “The history of the post office is the story of America.” Palm City’s post office played a chief role in bringing more people to the area. Letters from settlers shared information encouraging others to join them in Chillingworth’s remote Palm City Farms. One could call the post office, the “social media” of the day.
Palm City Post Office on the St. Lucie River with arriving horse and carriage, waving of American flag, but no post office sign. c. 1914. Thurlow Collection.
In this plat map from the 1920s it shows the location of the post office marked by a red dot. The St. Luice River and rudimentary bridge would be located to the east. Today we take such things for granted, but not in those days of yesteryear. The Palm City Post Office was a key place, a place where people came to get the “news of the day” or a “letter from a friend.”‘ Now we just look at our cell phones. Personally, I think I would rather sit, gossip, and wait on the porch at the old post office!
Plat map of Palm City, c. 1920s. Red dot denotes location of the Palm City Post Office between Palmetto Road and 1st Street. Today Palmetto Road is Martin Downs Blvd. and the street numbers have been changed. Thurlow Collection.
~ A tidbit from our upcoming book, A Pictorial History of Palm City, Florida, by Sandra Thurlow & Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch
~Charles Curtis Chillingworth, 1868-1936, was born in Liverpool, New York and passed away in West Palm Beach, Florida. Pictured below at 45 years old, second from left, front row.
Alligator Smith aside, it is Charles Curtis Chillingworth “distinguished pioneer, citizen, attorney and developer,” who must be recognized as the “father/founder” of Palm City and Palm City Farms. In the early 1900s western Palm City Farms was sold in ten acre plots with a small bonus lot in what was termed Palm City on the St. Lucie. Today I am going to share a bit about Chillingworth the man, and how his development was marketed.
In my reading, I came to especially like Chillingworth because his autobiography notes his appreciation of nature, including the beauty of Florida’s iconic cabbage palm trees.
“As I remember of it, I left Atlanta one evening about the middle of October, 1891, and reached Jacksonville the following morning. Later that day I took a train on the old Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railroad, now the Atlantic Coast Line, which runs on the west side of the St. Johns River. I changed cars at Enterprise Junction for Titusville. That evening with the sun in the west just before sunset, I saw the first cabbage palmetto trees I ever saw in my life, and they made a great impression on me….”
So how did he come to develop Palm City Farms?
Chillingworth a young, hard working lawyer, eventually learned about lands west of the St. Luice River and wanted a part of development himself.
As he put it:
“In 1909 a real estate boom sprung up in South Florida, especially in the purchase of sale of large tracts of land.”
After much back and forth, Chillingworth took title to at least 12,000 acres from the Florida Coast Line Canal & Transportation Company. He then opened the Palm Beach Land Company in Stuart in 1911, because at that time what became Martin County lie in Palm Beach County, and Stuart had a small downtown area.
Chillingworth’s land office sold Palm City Farms. Historic Society of Martin County.
Chillingworth explains who helped him market the lands giving insight into those times:
“I took with me Miss Reilly, who had been my stenographer in New York during that summer. She was a most faithful and efficient helper and I made her Assistant Secretary of the new Company…”
Years later after Chillingworth’s death, Miss Reilly, now married as “Patsy Reilly McCord,” wrote a 1964 piece for the Stuart News about how Palm City Farms and Palm City on the St. Lucie were marketed. It is fascinating to read her account. Then, like now, it was not just the natural resources of the land, but of course also the beauty of the St. Lucie River that “sold” newcomers.
“Patsy Reilly McCord” was C.C. Chillingworth’s’ Assistant Secretary – here photographed in a beautiful Palm City Farms’ grapefruit grove, c. 1915. She helped organize trips for prospective buyers to see the beauty of the area to sell Palm City Farms and Palm City on the St. Lucie. Martin Digital History.
Patsy (Reilly) McCord wrote::
“The sale of land progressed, and in order to entertain the prospective purchasers, the Palm City Land Company purchased boats and automobiles and mule teams and large comfortable covered wagons for use in displaying the wonders of the rivers, ocean and plantations. The Palm Beach land Company took care of all prospective buyers by entertaining them and paying all expenses of their visit, while here, consisting of boat trips to the inlet, trips out the North and South Forks as well as wagon trips to different points of interest in the county, winding up with a trip to Palm Beach.
In those days, the waters of the St. Lucie were salty, (the inlet had been opened in 1892 and the St. Lucie Canal was not completed until 1924) and at night the water was so full of phosphorus the millions of fish looked like millions of streaks of lighting darting through the water. It was a wonderful sight in those days to be on the river in the darkness.”
WOW! It must have been beautiful!
The maps below will help you see the location of Palm City Farms and Palm City. I hope you enjoyed today’s “tidbit.”
Google maps with Palm City Farms subdivision overlay. Todd ThurlowMy mother’s color coding of township/range map of Palm City Farms – pink. The Hanson Grant is in blue.Chillingworth offered a lot in Palm City on the St. Lucie to those who bought ten acres further west in Palm City Farms. Note location of St. Lucie River for reference – 1911 plat map.
~Expresso and turquoise waters converge near the St. Luice Inlet and the confluence of St. Lucie River/ Indian River Lagoon, as seen on February 1, 2024. Even with no major discharges from Lake Okeechobee since 2018, dark waters from rain runoff and area canals remain apparent.
When I asked Ed to take more varied shots of St. Luice, he said this is difficult due to being in a restricted air space during takeoff and landing. Also, unlike days of past, there are many airplanes and jets coming in and out of Witham Field.
Lake O is currently at 16.30 feet and we are experiencing a “strong El Nino” which means “rain.”
Maybe I’ll go up with Ed soon and try for some long range photographs. I have only been up in the Vans RV once, last June, and brought my barf bag! It was actually a wonderful flight.
~Aerials were taken 2-1-24 at approximately 12:30pm by Ed Lippisch.
Peck’s Lake, IRL
~Images below are complements of South Florida System Update, Department of Environmental Protection, 1-31-24.
Blue Green Algae: 
