While North Palm Beach itself is relatively young--just about retirement age--the history of this area is as broad as the horizon. Long before this village was founded in 1956, the Jeaga tribe lived and thrived here. In 1883, perhaps with a mind to farm pineapples, two men began purchasing local plots, becoming the area's first landowners. From there, through fits and starts, this idyll of small-town life began to take shape. The population surged...

Palm Beach is known internationally as a winter resort where the wealthy enjoy life in a tropical paradise. More than 100 years ago, Palm Beach was far different from its well-kept beaches, estates, and fabulous Worth Avenue shopping mecca of the 21st century. When the first permanent settlers arrived, they found the area covered by thick jungle that had to be tamed before they could carve out a new life for themselves. The settlers ended up with...

"When Addison Mizner built his opulent, glamorous mansions along the coast of southern Florida in the 1920s, he perfectly expressed America's growing power and confidence. The lyrical, Mediterranean aesthetic of Mizner's buildings that has come to define Palm Beach and Boca Raton characterizes one of the most extravagant periods in American history, when affluence and celebrity came together in a triumph of excess. Mizner perfectly embodied this flamboyant...

West Palm Beach was established in 1894, two decades after pioneers first arrived in the wilderness at Lake Worth. In 1893, Henry M. Flagler, Standard Oil magnate and Florida railroad mogul, finalized plans to extend his Florida East Coast Railroad south in order to turn Palm Beach into a winter playground for the rich. He designed West Palm Beach as the mainland commercial and residential support for his new resort. From its humble beginnings, it...