Boca Raton ( ; ) is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The population was 97,422 in the 2020 census, and it ranked as the 23rd-largest city in Florida in 2022. Many people with a Boca Raton postal address live outside of municipal boundaries, such as in West Boca Raton. As a business center, the city also experiences significant daytime population increases. Boca Raton is north of Miami and is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area.
It was first incorporated on August 2, 1924, as "Bocaratone", and then incorporated as "Boca Raton" on May 26, 1925. While the area had been inhabited by the Glades culture, as well as Spanish and later British colonial empires prior to its annexation by the United States, the city's present form was developed predominantly by American architect Addison Mizner starting in the 1920s. Mizner contributed to many buildings in the area having Mediterranean Revival or Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Boca Raton also became a key city in the evolution of the digital computer industry. The city is the birthplace in the 1980s of IBM's first personal computer and various other technologies created by the company.
Still centered around luxury beach culture, the city today is dotted by many malls and shopping centers, including the Town Center at Boca Raton. The ODP Corporation, which operates Office Depot and OfficeMax, is headquartered here. Boca Raton is also home to Florida Atlantic University, Lynn University, and the Evert Tennis Academy, owned by former professional tennis player Chris Evert. The city has a strict development code for the size and types of commercial buildings, building signs, and advertisements that may be erected within its limits, which has led to major thoroughfares without billboards and large advertisements, as well as increased green spaces on roads.
Name
Etymology Boca Ratón comes from Spanish and literally translates to "Mouse Mouth" in English. , meaning "mouth" (as in a river mouth), was a common term to describe an inlet on maps by sailors. The meaning of the word ratones for the area is less certain. Some claim that the word appears in old Spanish maritime dictionaries referring to "rugged rocks or stony ground on the bottom of some ports and coastal outlets, where the cables rub against".The Spanish Maritime Dictionary of 1831 Thus, one possible translation of Boca Raton is "Rugged Inlet".
Boca de Ratones appeared in early European maps as the name of the inlet in present-day Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County, while the area of Boca Raton was labeled Rio Seco, meaning "Dry River". Mapmakers later misplaced the name to the north and began referring to the body of water today known as Lake Boca Raton, as "Boca Ratone Lagoon" and later "Boca Ratone Sounde".
Pronunciation City residents pronounce Raton as . People not from the region often mispronounce this as instead.
History
Timeline
1890 – Bocaratone settled. 1896 – Florida East Coast Railway begins operating. 1909 – Bocaratone becomes part of newly created Palm Beach County. 1912 – Intracoastal Waterway opens. 1915 Telephone installed. Board of Trade organized. 1918 – Ebenezer Baptist Church founded in Pearl City neighborhood. 1923 – Boca Raton Inlet bridge constructed. 1924 Town of "Boca Ratone" incorporated. Addison Mizner chosen as town planner. George Long becomes mayor. 1925 Town of "Boca Raton" incorporated. Mizner Development Corporation in business. 1926 Cloister resort built. Chamber of Commerce founded. 1927 – Town Hall built. 1928 – Water plant built. 1930 Railroad station built. Population: 447. 1936 – Airport established. 1939 – Camino Real Bridge opens. 1942 – U.S. military Boca Raton Army Air Field established. 1947 – October: 1947 Cape Sable hurricane occurs. 1950 Art Guild established. Population: 992. 1955 – Boca Raton News begins publication. 1960 – Population: 6,961. 1961 Florida Atlantic University founded. Boca Raton Public Library building constructed. 1962 Lynn University established. Saint Andrew's School opens. 1963 – Boca Inlet Bridge opens. 1964 – Boca Raton Theatre in business. 1970 – Population: 28,506. 1972 – Boca Raton Historical Society founded. 1979 – Jewish Floridian of South County newspaper begins publication. 1980 Pope John Paul II High School established. Town Center at Boca Raton opens. 1981 – August: "IBM (International Business Machines) introduces the IBM PC from its Boca Raton factory." 1986 – Boca Raton Museum of Art active. 1989 – Boca Raton station opens. 1990 Old Floresta designated a city historic district. Population: 61,492. 1991 – W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters relocated to Boca Raton from New York. 1998 – City website online (approximate date). 1999 – W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters moves away from Boca Raton. 2000 Muvico cinema in business. Population: 83,255 2001 – Anthrax attack; Robert Stevens dies. 2004 – September: Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Jeanne occur. 2005 – October: Hurricane Wilma occurs. 2009 – Boca Raton News ceases publication. 2010 – Population: 84,392. 2012 October 22: United States presidential debate held in Boca Raton. 2014 – Susan Haynie elected mayor. 2017 Ted Deutch becomes U.S. representative for Florida's 22nd congressional district. September: Hurricane Irma occurs.
Early history The area where Boca Raton is now located was originally occupied by the Glades culture, a Native American tribe of hunter-gatherers who relocated seasonally and between shellfish sources, distinct from the Tequesta to the south and the Jaega to the north.
When Spain surrendered Florida to Britain in 1763, the remaining Tequestas, along with other Indians who had taken refuge in the Florida Keys, were evacuated to Cuba."Native Peoples", National Park System, United States Department of the Interior In the 1770s, Bernard Romans reported seeing both abandoned villages and no native population in the area.
The area remained largely uninhabited for long afterwards, during the early years of Florida's incorporation in the United States. The first significant European settler to this area was Captain Thomas Moore Rickards in 1895, who resided in a house made of driftwood on the east side of the East Coast Canal, south of what is now the Palmetto Park Bridge. He surveyed and sold land from the canal to beyond the railroad north of what is now Palmetto Park Road.Boca Raton Historical Society, Spanish River Papers , 1.1 (January 1973). Early settlement in the area increased shortly after Henry Flagler's expansion of the Florida East Coast Railway, connecting West Palm Beach to Miami.
Addison Mizner's resort town
Boca Raton as a city was the creation of architect Addison Mizner.
In 1920, Boca Raton was an unincorporated farming town with a population of 100. In 1925, Mizner announced his plan for "the foremost resort city on the North American continent," "a new exclusive social capital in America." After spending several years in Palm Beach, where, in his own words, he "did more than any one man to make the city beautiful," and designed the Everglades Club among many other buildings, in Boca Raton his plan was to create from scratch "a resort as splendid in its entirety as Palm Beach is in spots."
Activity in that area began at least a year, and probably more, before Mizner's announcement. Land acquisition, tens of thousands of acres, was the largest part. Reflecting his central role, immediately after Boca Raton was incorporated in 1924, Mizner was appointed Town Planner. The Mizner Development Company was incorporated in 1925, and promptly issued $5 million of stock, which was fully subscribed in less than a week. $500,000 was reserved for the "average Floridian"; the remainder was purchased by, as Addison called them, "noted personages", all with a Palm Beach connection: Lytle Hall, Harold Vanderbilt, J. Leonard Repogle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Rodman Wanamaker, Paris Singer, Irving Berlin, Madame Frances Alda, W. C. Robinson, Henry Huttleston Rogers Jr., D. H. Conkling, A. T. Herd, Porte, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Elizabeth Arden, Jesse Livermore, Clarence H. Geist, and T. Coleman du Pont as chairman. Addison's brother Wilson also appears on the list of investors, but he had little to invest.
Instead of the existing Palmetto Park Road, the main street in Mizner's Boca was to be El Camino Real, 20 lanes wide, which Mizner fancifully translated as "The Royal Highway", referring to Spain's road network and to the road to Santa Fe and to the Spanish missions in California. (Spanish kings rarely or never travelled on these roads; "The Government Road" would be just as accurate.) It was originally to be circular, with a lagoon in the middle. Soon it became, in the plans, Boca Raton's main east–west street, to be wide and with a canal for pleasure boats in the center. (In the drawing of it on the cover of Mizner Development's first brochure is a Venetian gondola.) His statement that it was inspired by Botafogo, a neighborhood and beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is another of his many inventions of foreign "facts". Mizner, who never went to Brazil nor knew Brazilians, simply made it up because the name "Botafogo" ("fire thrower") sounded impressive, as was the concept of imitating Rio de Janeiro. (The only street in Rio de Janeiro anything like the supposed picture, actually an artist's conception, of "Botafogo" that Mizner included in his first catalogue, is the :pt:Canal do Mangue, which runs down the middle of two streets, but is nowhere near Botafogo, a more elegant name than Mangue "mangrove".)
Only of the road was built (although the street has subsequently been extended to the west at normal scale). According to drawings, the centerpiece of the street was to be a canal for pleasure boats; it was never built.Seebohm 2001. pp. 216–217. All streets were to be at least wide.
His first buildings in Boca Raton were his Administrative Buildings, on El Camino Real (in 2018 the Addison Restaurant), and a small hotel to house interested investors. Mizner designed Boca's first town hall/police station/fire station/library, although the design actually built is much smaller and less expensive than what Mizner planned. Today (2018) it is the Boca Raton History Museum, which houses Boca's Welcome Center and the Boca Raton Historical Society.
The hotel was his Cloister Inn, built in 1926Curl, Donald W. and John P. Johnson. Boca Raton; A Pictorial History. Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Company, 1990. p. 52 and later renamed the Boca Raton Resort & Club. Today a Ritz-Carlton, it is one of the only "5 star" hotels in Florida. The 1969 addition of its "pink tower" hotel building is visible from miles away on the Intracoastal Waterway.
Because of the end of the Florida land boom of the 1920s and the 1926 Miami hurricane, the Mizner Development Corporation went into bankruptcy in 1927. Little of Mizner's Boca Raton was ever built: his Administration Buildings, the Cloister Inn, 1/2 mile of El Camino Real, the small Dunagan Apartments (demolished), a few houses near the Cloister Inn (demolished), the Spanish Village neighborhood, and a few small houses in what is now the Old Floresta Historic District neighborhood.
World War II Army Air Force Base