What’s with Flagler? Nearly everything in West Palm Beach traces back to one man. Henry Flagler — Standard Oil partner, railroad magnate — came down the Florida coast in the 1890s laying his Florida East Coast Railway, and decided the barrier island across the lagoon would make a glittering winter resort for wealthy Northerners. But a resort needs a workforce, a depot, a downtown. So in 1893 Flagler laid out a working town on the mainland to serve the island, paid two settlers $45,000 for the site, ran his rails in, and named it for exactly where it sat: West Palm Beach. The city has been Flagler’s ever since.
Here is the thing the name keeps half-hidden: West Palm Beach is the city; Palm Beach is the island. Across the Intracoastal sit the Gilded-Age hotels Flagler built — the Royal Poinciana, The Breakers — and the mansions of the very rich. West Palm Beach was the other side of that economy: the depot and the storefronts, the carpenters and railroad men, the place where the work got done and the workers lived. That split still defines the city. It is the down-to-earth, culturally rich mainland — the one with the downtown, the museums, and the nightlife — looking across the water at the glamour it helped build and supply.
Why People Visit West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach rewards visitors who want culture with their coastline: a serious arts scene, a lively downtown, historic neighborhoods under the palms, and the Intracoastal at the center of it all. Add the island just across the water and the year-round South Florida sun, and Flagler’s mainland city makes an easy case for itself.
