Ponte Vedra Beach Chamber of Commerce

History:

Shaped by a mix of cultures ranging from early Spanish settlers in the 1500's to invading golfers in the 1980's, Ponte Vedra Beach has a rich and unique history. Ponce de Leon, a Spanish explorer best known for his pursuit of the legendary "fountain of youth," landed on what would later become Ponte Vedra Beach on April 2, 1513. Seeing no suitable harbor, he sailed south and landed where Don Pedro Menendez later founded the nation's oldest city of St. Augustine in 1565. A small settlement begins to take shape in the Ponte Vedra Beach area. Haciendas were built and the roots for gracious living were planted.

For the rest of the century, Ponte Vedra Beach and the surrounding areas was the scene of many conflicts between native Timucuan Indians, the Spanish, the French and the English. For several decades during the 1700's, the area was the subject of raids that destroyed many haciendas and decimated the Indian population. In 1821, Spain sold Florida to the United States and the state became a territory. Ponte Vedra Beach blossomed with new settlers, plantations and sugar cane.

Later Florida's first governor, General Andrew Jackson, divided the territory into two counties - Escambia and St. Johns. The peaceful life of the area started to come to a halt with the start of the seven-year Seminole War in 1835 and continued with the four-year Civil War in 1861, which struck a final blow to the old plantation culture.

In 1914, two young chemical engineers, Henry Holland Buckman and George A. Pritchard, discover that Ponte Vedra's beautiful beaches contained over a dozen industrial minerals, including rutile and ilmenite, components necessary for the production of titanium and zirconium. By 1916, the National Lead Company had bought out Pritchard and Buckman; and the mining settlement was dubbed Mineral City. Mineral City played a crucial role in World War I, as titanium was a key component in the manufacture of poison gas; and Germany controlled much of the world's titanium supply. Therefore, the U.S. government ordered as much titanium as Mineral City's mines could produce.

The National Lead Company built the first 9-hole golf course in Ponte Vedra for its employees along with a log clubhouse and polo field in 1922, which in 1937 becmme the world famous Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. With the postwar mineral market dried up and production at a standstill, National Lead used its clubhouse and golf course as the base from which to launch a resort community. But the old Mineral City tag would never do. In one account, one of the developers reads a newspaper story claiming Christopher Columbus was born in Pontevedra, Spain, which was total fiction because Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. Nevertheless, the National Lead Company rechristens Mineral City as Ponte Vedra in 1928.

The state began work on a road along the shoreline from Ponte Vedra Beach to St. Augustine in 1929; hence State Road A1A was born which helped to speed up development of the resort community. Development marched on right through the Great Depression. Despite all this effort, however, the area remained relatively unknown. It did not match the development pace of South Florida as a tourist destination. Just as the country began to emerge from the Depression, Ponte Vedra's development picked up speed, then World War II erupted in 1941.

Blackout curtains were required to deceive the German submarines patrolling off the Atlantic Coast. Ponte Vedra residents are among the very few stateside Americans to actually witness acts of war firsthand as German submarines sank ships within sight of the Ponte Vedra shore and oil from torpedoed tankers blackened the beaches. On the night of June 16, 1942, four Nazi saboteurs from a German submarine paddled ashore to Ponte Vedra Beach in a small rubber boat, carrying explosives and a cache of U.S. currency and embarked on a mission which they dubbed "Operation Pastorious". They frolicked on the beach like tourists to disguise their intentions. Fortunately, before any damage was done, two of the Germans tipped off federal authorities about the plot and all were captured.