On February 1, 1907, the St. Lucie County Tribune gave a column to its northern neighbor under the headline “Prosperous Little Vero.” Improvements were going on, new settlers were coming, and the paper predicted that Vero would soon be one of the foremost sections of the fast-developing East Coast. Vero, Florida, was then a small grove and farming town at the north end of the new St. Lucie County. This page follows it through the two Fort Pierce weeklies from 1905 to 1911.
The ridge back from the river
The 1907 account began with the settlers who came before the town. The first took land on the Indian River front, which gave them the river for transport, and an outlook that early settlers counted as part of an ideal winter home. Later arrivals found no river front left. Some of them believed the better land lay on the wooded slope and the fertile ground back from the water, and one of these was the late H. T. Gifford, whom the account called the pioneer settler of Vero.
Vero itself stood on the Florida East Coast Railway, about 14 miles north of Fort Pierce and three quarters of a mile west of the Indian River. It had two general stores, one of them F. C. Gifford’s, a telephone system, a good school house, shelled streets and good roads. Farmers and fruit growers had lately settled around it and were clearing land and planting gardens. Across the river stood a house of refuge, one of the stations the government kept along the coast between St. Augustine and Fort Lauderdale.
The north-end column, 1905
Two years earlier, Vero’s news came in a few lines at a time under the Tribune’s north-end heading. In the issue of November 3, 1905, the Vero item announced a dance for Saturday night, with the usual good time expected. Fishing had been brisk that month but had dropped off over the last few days. The vegetable crops on both sides of the river were very fine, though a little late after the recent wet weather. The same column called F. C. Gifford the town’s hustling merchant.
Gifford
Another north-end settlement of the same years carried the Gifford name. In August 1905 a survey of the county’s farm districts came to Gifford and described a community of Black farmers (the word used was “colored”) with thrifty orange groves, pineapple plantations and vegetable farms. They were intelligent and industrious, the survey said, and were making their farms pay. In October of that year Gifford’s postmaster, who farmed as well, came to Fort Pierce to take out a license to run a general store at his place. He said heavy rains had done considerable damage to the beans.
In the spring of 1909 a petition asked for a special tax school district covering election precincts 8 and 9. Its territory took in five schools, among them Narrows, Quay, Bethel Creek and Gifford.
The fires of February 1910
Vero’s column of February 11, 1910, opened on a hard week. Forest fires had caused considerable excitement in and around the town. On Thursday a fire came in from the flatwoods, and the people living on the ridge west of the railroad fought it for hours to save their homes and crops. On Sunday another fire started by accident in a young orange grove and burned about two hundred young trees. Only the timely help of townspeople saved other groves, among them those of F. C. Gifford and N. O. Penny.
A cluster of grapefruit
Six weeks later the grove that had been saved was showing off. On a Sunday evening in March 1910 a News man brought down from Vero a cluster of eight large grapefruit grown by F. Charles Gifford, well formed and so tightly bunched that they looked like one solid mass. The fruit averaged over two pounds apiece. Mr. Gifford, the News said, had a profitable and pretty grove.
Fourteen to thirteen
On Saturday, October 1, 1910, the Wabasso baseball team traveled to Vero to play a picked team drawn from Vero and Fort Pierce, and won by 14 to 13. Wabasso’s correspondent gave the lineup and said the Vero side was expected to come north for a return game on the 15th, when Wabasso meant to beat them again.
Vero, Florida, in the county of 1905
Vero was one of the north-end towns of the new St. Lucie County. In 1925 the north of the county, Vero with it, became Indian River County. For another north-end town of the same years, see Sebastian, and for the pineapple colony near it, Viking. How the county itself was made is told in the formation of St. Lucie County.
Sources
This story is drawn from the two Fort Pierce weeklies of the day, The St. Lucie County Tribune and the Fort Pierce News, digitized by the Library of Congress in Chronicling America and in the public domain. “Prosperous Little Vero” is in the Tribune of February 1, 1907 (page 4).
The Vero column of 1905 is in the Tribune of November 3, 1905 (page 3); the farm survey that reached Gifford in the Tribune of August 18, 1905 (page 1); and the Gifford postmaster’s visit in the Tribune of October 13, 1905 (page 5).
The school district petition is in the News of April 30, 1909 (page 8) and later issues that spring. The fires are in the News of February 11, 1910 (page 1), the grapefruit in the News of March 25, 1910 (page 5), and the ball game in the Tribune of October 7, 1910 (page 3).
The News has no surviving issues from 1907, so the 1907 account survives in the Tribune only. Names are given only where the scanned text reads them clearly in more than one place; the grower whose young trees burned in 1910, Gifford’s postmaster and the other grove owners are left unnamed for that reason.