Pompano, a railway stop with no name until ...

Florida East Coast Rail Depot circa 1930
Courtesy of  State Archives of  Florida, Florida Memory

According to the Tropical Sun in 1914, the town of Pompano (now Pompano Beach), was named as a stop along the growing Florida East Coast Railway in 1896 in honor of an "excellent meal."

Eighteen years ago, the railroad went through to Miami, opening up the whole country as it went and one of our pioneer surveyors, Mr. Franklin Sheen, was kept very busy spying out the land and locating settlers near to the railroad.

In his explorations up and down the beach to Miami, he selected Pompano as the leading farming settlement in the whole county and succeeded in inducing people to invest there and it was necessary to give it a name. While consulting about a name at the old Park Cottage, in West Palm Beach, in company with some prospective purchasers, the company had had Pompano fish for dinner and in view of the fact that they all considered it an “excellent” meal it was determined that the name “Pompano” would be a good name for an “excellent” farming country and forthwith it was “dubbed” Pompano and that name went into the railroad with the requirement that they put a station there …

_______
For more about the Tropical Sun, see: Two cousins ...
http://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2013/03/two-cousins-stage-line-and-founding-of.html


Tags: Florida history, Pompano Beach history, Broward County history, Florida East Coast Railway, film research