Boynton Beach is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is situated about north of Miami. The 2020 census recorded a population of 80,380. Boynton Beach is located in the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida, which was home to 6,138,333 people at the 2020 census. The city is named after Nathan Boynton, a Civil War major and Michigan politician who became one of the first settlers in the area in 1895. Boynton Beach is located north of Delray Beach, south of Hypoluxo and Lantana, and east of Golf, while the municipalities of Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream, Manalapan, and Ocean Ridge are situated to the east across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Native Americans inhabited modern-day Boynton Beach thousands of years ago, with a burial mound west of the city including artifacts dating as far back as roughly 150 BCE. The first non-indigenous settlers, Dexter Hubel and his family, arrived in 1877. Major Boynton moved to present-day Boynton Beach in 1895, building the Boynton Hotel and bringing contingents from Michigan, many of whom practiced farming or established businesses in the vicinity of Ocean Avenue. Byrd and Fred Dewey filed the original plat for the Town of Boynton in 1898, although official incorporation did not occur until 1920. The oceanfront section of Boynton Beach split off in 1931 and became Ocean Ridge in 1939. Boynton Beach's population grew rapidly in the first few decades following World War II, with more than a three-fold increase in the 1950s, while development of the city expanded westward, particularly in the 1980s.
Today, Boynton Beach is the third-most populous municipality in Palm Beach County, behind only Boca Raton and West Palm Beach. The area along Congress Avenue south of Gateway Boulevard includes a large concentration of restaurants and retail stores at the Boynton Beach Mall, the Boynton Town Center, and Renaissance Commons. Boynton Beach also has several arts and culture facilities, such as the Boynton Woman's Club and Schoolhouse Children's Museum & Learning Center.
History
See also William S. Linton
Archaeological evidence indicates Native American inhabitation of the region dating back thousands of years, with Ais, Calusas, Jaegas, Mayaimis, and Tequesta settling in or near modern-day Palm Beach County. A complex of mounds west of present-day Boynton Beach and near the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge includes shards of pottery possibly from 150 BCE. An excavation of the site also yielded beads and glass from as recently as the 16th century, which are believed to have been influenced by the Spanish.
Captain James A. Armour, head keeper of the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse, filed the first land claim in modern-day Boynton Beach in 1875, although it is unlikely he lived there. Two years later, Dexter Hubel of Michigan and his family settled in the area, but they had to live at the Orange Grove House of Refuge in present-day Delray Beach until their house was built.
In 1894, two years before Henry Flagler built his railroad, a former American Civil War major named Nathan Boynton first set eyes on the area that now bears his name. Boynton hailed from Port Huron, Michigan. He was so impressed by the natural beauty of the year-round sunshine and pristine beaches, he built the famous Boynton Hotel, where he also spent winters with his family. The hotel, which opened in 1897, included accommodations for 100 guests and 5 guest cottages. Major Boynton died on May 27, 1911, in Port Huron, but the hotel lasted until 1925. Several commercial and residential buildings also sprang up along Ocean Avenue in the late 1890s, including the first post office in 1896.
The first settlers, whom Boynton had brought along from Michigan, soon realized that many fruits and vegetables thrived in the fertile climate. Pineapples, tomatoes, mangoes, and citrus fruit were packed in crates and shipped across the country on the newly built Florida East Coast Railroad. Alonzo King and Samuel Cade, both African American farmers, taught these early settlers methods for cultivating muck soil and dealing with the presence of mosquitos and rattlesnakes.
Boynton Beach was founded on September 26, 1898, when Byrd Spilman Dewey and her husband Fred S. Dewey filed the original plat in the Dade County courthouse for the Town of Boynton. Fred S. Dewey, one of Flager's secretaries, bought a large area of land west of the Intracoastal Waterway earlier that year. He subdivided the land into 2.5 acre (1.0 ha) tracts for agricultural uses, which he sold to settlers and hotel workers. Buyers of these tracts also received a plot within the residential sections of the townsite.