Pahokee

A view of the West Palm Beach
Canal near Pahokee.

Courtesy HSPBC.

First known as East Beach, and then Ridgeway Beach, Pahokee took the Seminole name for the Everglades, Pay-ha-o-kee, meaning “grassy waters.” Much of the five square miles that became Pahokee was owned either by the State of Florida or the Southern States Land and Timber Company, which often allowed farmers to work the land without requiring purchase or rent payments. Dentist (A)lonzo Warrick “L. W.” Armstrong arrived in 1915. Celery grower B. A. Howard from Sanford, Florida, bought almost 400 acres and established the Pahokee Realty Company to sell it in parcels.

Big O Hike

In November 1991, Clarence Henry “Hank” McCall Jr. and his wife, Irma Franklin Winter McCall, of West Palm Beach celebrated their 70th birthdays by taking a walk around Lake Okeechobee; the 109-mile trip on the earthen berm took them 7 ½ days. The McCalls’ celebration inspired the Big O Hike-on-the-Dike, an annual tradition organized by the Loxahatchee chapter of the Florida Trail Association to raise awareness of the 1,300-mile Florida National Scenic Trail.

Much of the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail (LOST), that tops the 34-foot-high Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake has been paved since the McCalls’ hike; the rest is gravel. Since 1992, up to 200 hikers have left Pahokee each November to walk nine to 14 miles per day; nine days and 110 miles later, about 30 people arrive back in Pahokee the day after eating Thanksgiving Day dinner at the Clewiston Inn.

Although a frost in February 1917 damaged crops throughout Florida, a high ridge in what is now downtown Pahokee protected farms from the elements. News that Pahokee’s vegetable fields had not been damaged, and the opening of the West Palm Beach Canal that year, attracted more farmers, including Dr. William H. Lair. The first county commissioner from the Everglades Drainage District, Lair also helped to organize the Pahokee Drainage District in 1922, when the City of Pahokee was incorporated.

Main Street in Pahokee, 1930.

Courtesy HSPBC.

During the hurricane of 1928, hundreds of Pahokee residents survived by taking shelter in the new Pahokee High School, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1930, Pahokee had over 2,000 residents, and it prospered throughout the 1930s.