History of Lantana
The Town of Lantana, incorporated in 1921, encompasses an area of 2.79 square miles located about 5 miles south of the City of West Palm Beach, Florida, eastward to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Town is a full service community offering Police protection, Public Works, Water and Sewer Utilities, Building, Marine Safety and Municipal administration. The Town's form of government consists of a Town Manager with a Mayor and four Council Members elected for three- year overlapping terms. The Town Manager is appointed by the Town Council.
The Town of Lantana's recreational facilities include an eight-acre municipal beach with 745 feet of ocean frontage, open picnic areas, an open-air restaurant and sundry store, showers, restrooms, lifeguard station and playground area. The Town has four passive parks, which encompass 12 acres and provide shaded picnic areas, with playground equipment and restrooms. The Town also has a 22-acre sports complex which consists of several baseball fields, soccer fields, basketball courts and a playground. The Town has a recreation center with four tennis courts (two lighted), four shuffleboard courts (lighted) and a barbecue pavilion with a picnic area. The Town has a two-acre boat launching facility capable of a four boat capacity with a parking area.
The Lyman family deserves the distinction of being the founders of the Town of Lantana, although they were not the first settlers.
Morris Benson Lyman was born in Bosanquest, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada on September 22, 1860. In June of 1884 he secured passage on the schooner Bessie B, which made periodic trips from Jacksonville to the area of Lake Worth. He lived in the area for six months while building the Dellmoore Cottage for Mr. R.B. Moore. In December of 1884 Morris returned to Michigan to marry Mary Augustus Bellz and they moved to Jacksonville. On September 22, 1888, at the age of 28, he arrived to make a permanent home on the shores of beautiful Lake Worth. With him were his wife, Mary, two sons, and his mother who accompanied them to help with the children. His father, M.K., and brother George had been living on the land they homesteaded, in a three-room house, built sometime in 1887. Morris filed application #17751 for a homestead with the Gainesville land office on August 3, 1887, for lots 2, 3, and 4, Twp. 45S, Range 43E, Sec.3 now known as the Lantana Point Addition.
The point of land where the Lymans chose to settle was a natural point of land known as Lyman's point. Sometime in 1889, M.B. Lyman established a store and Indian trading post. By August 1, 1889 a post office was established in Lantana, with M.B. as the postmaster. The first post office was in the store (Chronology of Florida Post Office Handbook #2). When M. B. was requested to choose a town name, he chose Lantana Point, for the wild Lantana plant (mint family) which grows here so profusely. Later, the "Point" was dropped.
Information taken from (Early Lantana, Her neighbors and more ), by Mary Collar Linehan.
Jack Carpenter's speech on the History of Lantana
Jack Carpenter, a former Lantana Town Council member and President of the Lantana Historical Society, has offered the fascinating tidbit that the town's first mayor was a woman. Carpenter cites Mary Linehan's Early Lantana, Her Neighbors and More.
On July 20, 1921, when the town incorporated, J.H. Vance was elected mayor. But he changed his mind right after the election and never took office; one story said he found out he lived outside town limits. So the town appointed Ellen M. Anderson, who served for two years. Women had held the right to vote only since August 26, 1920.
Anderson was followed by another woman, Mary S. Paddock, who served until 1924.
Carpenter says officials of a state agency called him a few years ago saying they believed Anderson was the state's first female mayor, so that's what he's said ever since in his lectures. Oops!
On June 8, 1917, Moore Haven incorporated on the west side of Lake Okeechobee. Marian Horwitz was elected its first mayor. It was three years before women's suffrage. She is believed to be the first female mayor in Florida and the South and one of the first in the country.
"I'm going to have to change my speech," Carpenter lamented.
12 Historical Facts of Lantana
1. Earliest settlers got many necessities from the beach as there were many shipwrecks.
2. Gathering of oysters was an early industry.
3. After the railroad came through in 1896, there was a packing house for shipping the produce which grew mainly west of Lake Osborne. It was capable of loading 4 cars at one time.
4. The first business in Lantana was a store located on a dock on the south side of Lantana Point. Established by M. B. Lyman in the summer of 1889, it was the third mercantile established on the lake of Lake Worth.
5. Indians came to trade at the General Store and Trading Post as late as 1910.
6. There was no bridge until 1925. Prior to that, a trip to the beach meant crossing the lake by boat and a walk through the jungle and mangrove swamp.
7. In 1895, Miss Daisy Butler, Lantana's second teacher, lived at the Bassett Hotel. It was located on the south side of Lantana Point, near the first store.
8. The Hypoluxo-Lantana area was the second in the county to be settled. The first was the Palm Beach-West Palm Beach area, not including the Pierce family on Hypoluxo Island in 1873.
9. E.R. Bradley, who was the first Barefoot Mailman when the route started in Lantana in 1885, had lived in Lantana since 1877.
10. The Town of Lantana was incorporated July 20, 1921. Twenty two voted in the first election. The first two mayors were women.
11. During World War II, soldiers took survival training in the South Pacific jungle by having to live off the land on Hypoluxo Island and the nearby mangrove swamps.
12. The first schoolhouse was built on the lake front, at the north end of Lake Drive in 1894.
THE ABOVE INFORMATION WAS MADE AVAILABLE BY THE HERITAGE COMMITTEE OF 1976, A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE LANTANA BICENTENNIAL COMMITTEE. IT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE TO YOU FROM THE GREATER LANTANA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
