Did you know that the major streets in Boca Raton have a story to tell? Their names are embedded in history. To find out the how and why of the streets we traverse every day, let’s take a ride into the past through the Streets of Boca.
To begin the first map of Boca Raton was originally laid out as a grid with four primary East-West thoroughfares: Yamato Road, Glades Road, Palmetto Park Road, and Camino Real. The Atlantic Ocean is East and the Everglades Are West. The town was to be an agricultural community and 1000 acres were divided into ten acre plots. Thus in 1897 the town of Boca Raton was born. Let’s ride into the story of Yamato and Glades Roads.
Moving forward our first stop is Yamato Road (pronounced YAH-mu-tow). Today Yamato Road is a wide street lined with strip plazas, office buildings, The Boca Raton Innovation Campus – formerly the site of IBM – churches, and one of Boca’s largest high schools, Spanish River High School. As we Round the corner into the past, we find the street name is a tribute to one of the earliest farming communities in Boca, the Yamato Colony. The word Yamato is an ancient name for Japan and means large, peaceful country. The land was sold to a Japanese student who recruited young Japanese men to farm the land. Pineapples became the primary crop, and one of the recruits was Sukeji, later George, Morikami. In 1908 a blight devastated the pineapple crop. Many left, but Morikami remained and successfully planted tomatoes, peppers, green beans until the war in 1941. He spent the war years in Miami. When he returned, he resumed farming and built a thriving mail order business. He lived alone and became a hermit. At the end of his life he bequeathed one hundred fifteen acres of land to Palm Beach County to repay his debt to his adopted country. A right turn at the corner of Yamato and Jog, after a short ride, there will be a sign for the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. This is the legacy of George Morikami and the Yamato Colony. The tiny colony lives on each time a visitor exits at Yamato Road and stops to smell the roses of the beautiful and serene Morikami Museum and Gardens.
Heading South on Jog Road we pass Clint Moore Road named after a 1920’s road paving contractor from Tennessee. Onward crossing Yamato and then to Glades Road, the second main East-West thoroughfare of Boca Raton. No surprise that this street derived its name from the Everglades, the “River of Grass.” This marshland has no counterpart on the earth.
The early Indians called it Pahayokee meaning “grassy waters.” Other explorers called it EVERglades because it seemed to go on forever. It is almost perfectly flat with a slight imperceptible tilt to the to the south, which keeps the water flowing across it. The Everglades have always been subject to rain in the summer and drought during the winter. The alligator, the “king of beasts, and descendent of dinosaurs, has become a symbol of life in the Everglades although the Everglades are teeming with many other forms of life from fish and frogs to deer and herons, ibis, egrets and spoonbills to name a few.
Into the ebb and flow of wet and dry came man. The Indians and early settlers had left The Everglades undisturbed, but in the twentieth century man began making changes that altered the delicate ecological balance of this unique marshland. After severe droughts, fires and death of wildlife the State of Florida contributed 40 million and the Federal government contributed several hundred million toward the protection and restoration of the Everglades. Active restoration is underway and ill take decades to Complete. Airboat tours are available.
Soon we pass Butts Road, whose namesake, August Butts and his family were one of the largest farmers in Boca Raton. In the 1930’s after the land bust, Butts recognized that farmland west of Boca could be purchased at bargain prices, and he started buying. The family utilized the most current farming methods of the time. When Butts died in 1955, the farm was 3500 acres and one of the largest bean farms in Florida.
A ride down Glades would not be complete without a visit to Town Center Mall, which made its debut in 1979 built by Arvida Corporation in conjunction with the Federated Department stores. Although the center of town was not there, the burgeoning development of Western subdivisions foretold the shopping patterns shifting to the west. It has become town center and hosts over 12 million visitors a year. The Streets of Boca are telling you the story of Boca. Stayed tuned next month as we continue our ride to Palmetto Park Road and Camino Real, the remaining two thoroughfares of Boca Raton.
