In March 1909 the Wabasso correspondent of the St. Lucie County Tribune dared anyone who doubted that the town was improving to take a look around. Wabasso, Florida, was then a small farming town in the north end of the new St. Lucie County. Its weekly column in the two Fort Pierce papers is mostly visits and illnesses, but read from 1905 to 1911 it tells how the town made a living and where it gathered. This page follows it.
A look around, March 1909
The tour began to the north, with two places newly started and a new grove in flourishing condition beyond them. More flourishing groves followed. To the southeast stood a fine grove belonging to George Sears, and a grove on the river road was showing signs of being a money maker. Out on the ridge there were new buildings going up and land being cleared by Messrs. Holt, Smith, Woods and Knowles. A house waiting for its painters would be, the column promised, one of the prettiest in Wabasso.
The column closed with a forecast: in a few years, without a doubt, Wabasso would be the largest orange shipping point in the county. The digitized papers end in 1911, before anyone could check.
Fish and winter beans
The town also shipped what the river and the fields gave it. In October 1905 the Wabasso column reported E. A. Holt shipping quantities of fish. In January 1907 bean shipping from Wabasso was still going on in the middle of winter.
Beans were still the winter crop in 1910. Under the Fort Pierce News headline “Christmas Tree at Wabasso,” the correspondent reported that in spite of the cold weather already that winter, some of the town’s bean growers had brought in a crop that was fetching fancy prices. The week before, an advertisement for a Jacksonville fertilizer company in the Tribune named Wabasso, with Jensen, Quay and the Narrows, among the points whose St. Lucie County beans had been selling in the New York market.
The school house
The school house was where Wabasso met. The column of October 27, 1905, announced that school would open the next Monday, October 30. In February 1906 a visiting minister was back holding special services at the school house, and in January 1907 a minister from Sebastian preached for the town.
In 1909 the young people ran the Wabasso Literary Society in the school house, in connection with the school. Their teacher gave them the second and fourth Friday afternoons of each month for meetings, and the April 2 column called it quite a success.
On Saturday, December 24, 1910, the town was crowded with visitors who had come for the Christmas exercises at the school house; school had closed for the holidays the day before. In February 1911 the column announced a prayer meeting there for Sunday night at seven o’clock.
Winter people
In December 1910 the column counted arrivals. A couple who had lived at Wabasso and then spent several years at Delray moved back, meaning to build on their river road property and make Wabasso their winter home. A family of five came from Ohio to settle. “And still the people are coming,” the News correspondent wrote, some for the winter only and some looking for places to build. Two weeks later the column noted a grove owner from Illinois who came down every winter to look after his young grove on the ridge.
Fourteen to thirteen
On Saturday, October 1, 1910, the Wabasso baseball team traveled to Vero to play a picked team from Vero and Fort Pierce, and won by 14 to 13. The Wabasso correspondent gave the lineup and promised to beat them again at the return game on the 15th.
A sawmill comes to town
In August 1911 the Tribune reported that a sawmill which had stood at the Sebastian bridge, west of Sebastian, had been moved the week before to Wabasso.
Wabasso, Florida, in the county of 1905
Wabasso was one of the north-end towns of the new St. Lucie County. In 1925 the north of the county became Indian River County, and Wabasso went with it. For the pineapple colony nearby, see Viking, and for how the county itself was made, 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.
From the Tribune: the March 1909 look around in the issue of March 12, 1909 (page 3); the fish and the school opening, October 27, 1905 (page 3); and the special services, February 23, 1906 (page 3).
Also from the Tribune: the bean shipping and the Sebastian minister, January 18, 1907 (page 3); the Literary Society, April 2, 1909 (page 4); the fertilizer advertisement, December 23, 1910 (page 9); the ball game, October 7, 1910 (page 3); and the sawmill, August 25, 1911 (page 6).
From the News: the winter arrivals in the issue of December 16, 1910 (page 6); “Christmas Tree at Wabasso,” with the beans and the Illinois grove owner, December 30, 1910 (page 1); and the prayer meeting, February 3, 1911 (page 1).
The Tribune has no surviving issues from 1908 and the News none from 1907. Names are given only where the scanned text reads them clearly in more than one place; the ministers, the grove owners on the 1909 tour and the families of 1910 are left unnamed for that reason.