Every community on the Treasure Coast has a story behind its name, and those stories are as varied as the towns themselves. The Treasure Coast itself, the region made up of Indian River, Martin, and St. Lucie counties, takes its name from the Spanish treasure fleet that wrecked off this coastline in a 1715 hurricane. Within that region, Martin County’s own communities carry names rooted in Native American history, Spanish explorers, Danish immigrants, ambitious real estate ventures, and other colorful characters. Read on to learn more!
Hobe Sound
The name traces back to Spanish explorers and mapmakers, who recorded the area as “Jobe” and pronounced it “Ho-bay.” British mapmakers and settlers who came later anglicized that pronunciation over time, eventually landing on the modern spelling, Hobe, paired with Sound.
Hutchinson Island
Hutchinson Island is named for James Hutchinson, who received a land grant from Florida’s Spanish Governor in 1811 to settle the area, once home to the Ais tribe. Pirates made quick work of Hutchinson’s plantation and crops, but his name stuck with the island long after. With so few people living in the area, a house of refuge was built in 1876 to shelter shipwreck survivors and travelers passing through.
Indiantown
Indiantown’s name is a direct nod to the Seminoles who settled in the area and built a trading post there in the early 1800s, after fleeing south to escape the U.S. Army. Unique to the rest of the surrounding cities, this rustic community is situated in the heart of Florida’s cattle country and is home to working ranches, farmland, equestrian attractions, and more.
Jensen Beach
Jensen Beach is named for John Laurence Jensen, a Danish immigrant who arrived in 1881 and planted a pineapple plantation on the sandy, well-drained soil south of the earlier settlement of Eden. His plantation grew into the town of Jensen, and by 1895, with the Florida East Coast Railway freshly connected, the area was shipping over a million boxes of pineapples a year during peak season, earning it the title “Pineapple Capital of the World.” The pineapple boom didn’t last long, undone by a brutal 1895 freeze and two fires in 1908 and 1910. But the pineapple symbol can still be seen all over town.
Jupiter Island
Jupiter Island takes its name from “Jupiter,” a variation of the Spanish word “Jobe,” the same root that gave nearby Hobe Sound its name. The land traces back to an 1815 Spanish royal land grant, passed through generations of speculators, English investors, and a failed 1920s Hollywood-style resort scheme called Picture City, before the Reed family took ownership in 1934 and guided its development for over 60 years, eventually donating portions of the island to conservation as the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Ocean Breeze
Ocean Breeze started out as Ocean Breeze Park, a tourist camp and trailer park that Harry Hoke established in 1938. Hoke named the site for the Atlantic breezes that roll in off the coast. Residents voted to drop “Park” from the name in a December 2013 referendum, officially becoming the Town of Ocean Breeze.
Palm City
Palm City owes its name to a real estate venture led by Charles C. Chillingworth, a Palm Beach lawyer and developer. In 1910, Chillingworth formed the Palm Beach Land Company and bought more than 12,000 acres of wilderness on the west bank of the St. Lucie River. He split the land into 10-acre parcels called Palm City Farms, with smaller lots closer to the water marketed as Palm City-on-the-St. Lucie River. The name itself was part of a deliberate marketing push, chosen to sound tropical and appealing enough to pull northern city dwellers south to buy sunny Florida land.
Port Salerno
Italian immigrants who settled along the Manatee Pocket gave Port Salerno its name, drawn to how closely the area’s protected natural harbor resembled the coastal Italian city of Salerno. The word “Port” was added officially in 1960, both to avoid confusion with the original Salerno in Italy and to lean into the area’s maritime character.
Rio
Rio was first platted in 1893 under the name Rio St. Lucie. Its location on the banks of the St. Lucie River inspired the name, since “rio” is simply Spanish for “river.” But don’t mispronounce it! Locals say “rye-o” rather than the Spanish “ree-o.”
Sewall’s Point
Captain Sewall, an heir to the historic Spanish Hanson Grant, settled in the area with his wife, Abbie, in 1889. Because his dock served as a key stop for travelers heading north and south along the coast, the surrounding peninsula and settlement came to carry the Sewall’s Point name.
Stuart
Stuart is named for Homer Hine Stuart Jr., a New Yorker who settled on the north side of the St. Lucie River in 1883 and briefly tried his hand at growing pineapples like his neighbors. When his fiancée declined to join him in Florida, he abandoned pioneer life, married her up north, and moved on to a career in Philadelphia, but his name stayed behind on the settlement he’d left. Several of his family members also held land along the river and are buried in All Saints Cemetery in Jensen Beach.
Tequesta
Tequesta carries the name of the Tequesta tribe, once one of the most powerful Native peoples in southeast Florida, with territory spanning present-day Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Their presence came to light in 1955, when workers excavating land near Jupiter Island unearthed a Tequesta encampment mound full of artifacts. The developer overseeing that work, Charles Martyn, named the area Tequesta in the tribe’s honor, and that land, later known as the Tequesta Country Club, eventually became part of the Village of Tequesta (which is split over Martin County and Palm Beach County).