Introduction

An elegant art deco city with palm trees, sensitively designed architecture, white sand beaches, beautiful parks, and world-class arts and culture, Boca Raton is large enough to support major businesses, good schools, and sophisticated entertainments while remaining small enough to maintain its character and charm.

The city has over 40 parks and nature preserves and over 30 golf courses, many of them championship level. Beaches are clean and well kept, and Boca Raton's balmy subtropical climate means that residents get to spend a great deal of time enjoying the outdoors. With top soccer, good recreational facilities and a full range of watersports year round, there is plenty to do out there!

Careful planning has maintained the elegant character of Boca Raton's downtown. The original Town Hall and Railway Station have been restored and opened to the public. Many fine deco homes can be found in older parts of the city, and the newer developments tend to be visually sensitive to this distinctive architectural heritage.

Facilities like the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the excellent Children's Museum and the gorgeous Morikami Museum and Gardens enrich the cultural life of the city's residents, and there is always plenty to see, from a performance at the Boca Raton Ballet to a Broadway hit at the Caldwell Theatre Company to a pops concert by the Greater Palm Beach Symphony. Youth may try out for Palm Beach County's Youth Symphony Orchestra, which is based at Boca Raton, and children spend many hours enjoying the superb Science Explorium.

There are plenty of good places to shop in Boca Raton, from classy downtown stores to well known chains and malls further inland. Downtown's Mizner Park pays tribute to the town's original architect with top restaurants and one-of-a-kind boutiques housed in a square around the pretty park. Art and performance events are often held in the gazebo here, and the refreshing ocean breeze makes it a lovely spot to enjoy the sunshine with a gelato in hand. Restaurants are diverse enough to satisfy any desire, from casual beachfront dining to elegant silver service and from spicy Cajun to family-run Italian.

Add it all up and you can easily see -  Boca Raton is a great place to live, work, and play.

Location

Beautiful Boca Raton is on the Atlantic seacoast in Southern Florida's Palm Beach County, about 50 miles north of Miami.

Highway 1 passes through Boca Raton on its way up and down the coast through all the pretty seafront towns, and I-95 runs parallel, about 3 miles inland from downtown. Both run south to Fort Lauderdale, Miami and beyond and north to West Palm Beach, Melbourne and beyond.

Route 869 runs north/south about 7 miles west of Boca Raton, journeying northwest to Orlando and south to Miami. Highway 441 (about 10 miles west of downtown Boca Raton) journeys north to Greenacres before turning inland and traveling west to the shores of Lake Okeechobee (about 60 miles from Boca Raton). Highway 441 south leads to Fort Lauderdale. I-75 west from Fort Lauderdale journeys across the state to Florida's Pacific seacoast at Naples.

Delray Beach is about 8 miles from Boca Raton and Boynton Beach is about 14; both towns are north of the city on Highway 1. Fort Lauderdale is 20 miles south and Miami a further 30 miles beyond.

Transportation/Airports 

Residents of Boca Raton have easy access to three airports: the Boca Raton Regional Airport, Palm Beach International Airport, and Fort Lauderdale International. Conde Naste Traveler Magazine voted Palm Beach the third best airport in the nation in 2003 and it is known for the helpful services it provides, like "ambassadors" in teal jackets who are there to help travelers. Airlines fly to cities across the nation and to key centers in South America, Europe, the British Isles, and Japan.

Fort Lauderdale International is another excellent facility with international flights to Canada, South America, and the Caribbean. This airport offers flights to a far greater range of South American cities than Palm Beach International.

South Florida's Tri Rail commuter rail system connects Miami with Boca Raton, Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach County runs an excellent bus service in the region, with routes within Boca Raton as well as routes that connect it to Palm Beach and the surrounding area.

A Little History

Home to the Calusa Indian people for centuries, the Boca Raton area was claimed for Spain by Ponce de Leon in the early seventeen-hundreds. The Calusas defended their homelands fiercely and effectively, but most eventually succumbed to European diseases, and the last known members of the tribe had died by the late seventeen-hundreds.

The land passed from Spain to England but remained largely free of European interference until the eighteen-nineties, when it was settled by outsiders for the first time. Until then, Seminole Indian bands occupied the coast and Boca Raton area (which was mapped and named in the eighteen-thirties). The first outsider to settle Boca Raton was Thomas Moore Rickards, a civil engineer, who cleared land and built a house in 1895.

The arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway the following year brought Rickards some neighbors, recruited by Flagler, the railway owner, to clear the land and plant orange, pineapple, and vegetable crops. Flagler planned to use his trains to transport crops north to the cities, and manufactured goods south for the pioneers to buy.

Most of the early pioneers came from North and South Carolina and nearby states. They hunted for local deer, rabbit, and fish and ate the fruits of the native palmetto, guava, cocoplum and sea grape trees. They traded with the Seminole for additional foods and worked hard on the land.

Slowly the settlement of Boca Raton grew. Rickards opened a general story and another settler opened a grocery in nearby Delray Beach. Flagler attracted pioneers from Japan through businessman Joseph Sakai, and Rickards trained them to grow pineapple. A blight destroyed their early crop, and freezes and infestations foiled the efforts of the other farmers. Eventually Rickards and his family gave up and returned to North Carolina, and many Japanese went elsewhere. One Japanese truck driver, George Morikami, bought up a lot of land from departing families and donated it to the city before his death. Today this is the site of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens at Delray Beach.

By the early nineteen-twenties, Boca Raton was a small and sleepy farming center. Incorporation came in 1925, at the height of the Florida land boom. Zoning allowed for development and a group of investors bought up a great deal of oceanfront property with this aim in mind. Society architect Addison Mizner was to design homes and an elegant hotel for holiday makers.

Mizner set out to transform Boca Raton into a playground for the rich and famous, many of whom were his friends. He built twenty-nine beautiful homes in Floresta, now an historic area next to the Boca Raton Museum of Art; and about twelve smaller ones in Spanish Village, north of Singing Pines and the Children's Museum. The elegant Mediterranean Revival Cloister Inn opened its doors in early 1926; today it is the superbly maintained Boca Raton Resort & Club.

Mizner and company went bankrupt and the Great Depression put an end to any further development until World War II, when fear of the German submarine threat lead to 20,000 army personnel being posted in Boca Raton; they were housed in what was to become the Florida Atlantic University. Locals continued to live off agricultural production, selling green beans and other winter crops to northern cities.

The post-war years have seen a tremendous upsurge in interest in Boca Raton. Young families were attracted to the gorgeous subtropical climate and surroundings and businesses began to relocate here in the mid-sixties, led by IBM and the Florida Atlantic University.

ABOUT EDUCATION

The School District of Palm Beach County administers Boca Raton's seven elementary, four middle, and three high, public schools. This top district was rated third best in the United States in comparison to others with over 100,000 students, by the national business journal Expansion Management.

There are several good private schools in Boca Raton as well, including a Montessori school, a Jewish school, several Christian schools, and a preparatory academy.

Boca Raton has several good universities and colleges, including Barry University, Lynn University, Florida Atlantic University, and the renowned Harid Conservatory dance school.