Boca Raton, Florida

While the area had been inhabited by the Glades culture, as well as Spanish and later British colonial empires prior to its annexation by the United States, the city's present form was developed predominantly by Addison Mizner starting in the 1920s.Some claim that the word ratones appears in old Spanish maritime dictionaries referring to "rugged rocks or stony ground on the bottom of some ports and coastal outlets, where the cables rub against".[16] The area where Boca Raton is now located was originally occupied by the Glades culture, a Native American tribe of hunter-gatherers who relocated seasonally and between shellfish sources, distinct from the Tequesta to the south and the Jaega to the north.[37] What Spanish voyagers called "Boca de Ratones" was originally to the south, in present-day Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County.[40] Early settlement in the area increased shortly after Henry Flagler's expansion of the Florida East Coast Railway, connecting West Palm Beach to Miami.[41]: 7 [42] In 1925, Mizner announced his plan for "the foremost resort city on the North American continent,"[43]: 4 "a new exclusive social capital in America.[45]: 140 $500,000 was reserved for the "average Floridian"; the remainder was purchased by, as Addison called them, "noted personages", all with a Palm Beach connection: Lytle Hall, Harold Vanderbilt, J. Leonard Repogle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Rodman Wanamaker, Paris Singer, Irving Berlin, Madame Frances Alda, W. C. Robinson, H. H. Rodgers, D. H. Conkling, A. T. Herd, Porte, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Elizabeth Arden, Jesse Livermore, Clarence H. Geist, and T. Coleman du Pont as chairman.[43]) His statement that it was inspired by Botafogo, a neighborhood and beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is another of his many inventions of foreign "facts".[45]: 144 Mizner, who never went to Brazil nor knew Brazilians, simply made it up because the name "Botafogo" ("fire thrower") sounded impressive, as was the concept of imitating Rio de Janeiro.Little of Mizner's Boca Raton was ever built: his Administration Buildings, the Cloister Inn, 1/2 mile of El Camino Real, the small Dunagan Apartments (demolished),[41] a few houses near the Cloister Inn (demolished), the Spanish Village neighborhood,[49][41] and a few small houses in what is now the Old Floresta Historic District neighborhood.Much of the Boca Raton Army Airfield was later donated to Palm Beach County and became the grounds of Florida Atlantic University.A red wooden bridge and remnants from the Watusi Geyser and Zambezi Falls, a 30-foot waterfall,[52] from Africa USA can still be seen at the entrance to Camino Gardens.Originally situated in unincorporated Palm Beach County, the site was annexed into Boca Raton almost a year following its dedication in 1970.The campus was designed with self-sufficiency in mind and sported its own electrical substation, water pumping station, and rail spur.The site was sold to T-REX Management Consortium, then to the Blackstone Group in 2005, who renamed it the Boca Corporate Center and Campus.Crocker Partners, noted for its development of Mizner Park and Office Depot headquarters, purchased BRiC in April 2018.In 1991, the new downtown outdoor shopping and dining center, Mizner Park, was completed over the site of the old Boca Raton Mall.A new gated community called Royal Palm Polo was annexed to the City of Boca Raton, which is the only jurisdiction north of Clint Moore Road.[66] Like other South Florida cities, Boca Raton has a water table that does not permit building basements, however plumbing and sewage is constructed underneath the homes and streets, in addition to electrical systems in some areas.The neighborhood was originally platted on May 30, 1915, for the blue-collar African Americans employed at the Boca Raton Resort and similar establishments, on area farms, in construction, and various other jobs.[76] Certain areas of outside of Boca Raton city limits, such as the Sandalfoot Cove community, have significant populations of Brazilian[77] and other Latino immigrants.In 1999, the Simon Property Group bought Town Center at Boca Raton and began building a new wing on its southeastern side, and completed renovations in 2018.[122] Private schools in Boca Raton accelerated in demand in the early 2020s as Wall Street moved many employees and offices to the South Florida area.On April 27, 2018, Governor Rick Scott suspended Susan Haynie due to felony and misdemeanor charges brought against her for corruption and bribery.As of January 2023, Democrat Jared Moskowitz represents Florida's 23rd Congressional district, which includes the most northern point of Boca Raton and extends south through Palm Beach County.[155] In recent years, the city, like most of the county (especially neighboring Delray Beach) has experienced a steady rise in heroin and opioid overdoses.At the southeast end of the lagoon was a short protrusion toward the south which would become the Boca Raton Inlet after a sandbar at its mouth was removed.To the west of the scrub was a half mile or wider swamp within which flowed north to south the "Prong of Hillsborough River", which is now the El Rio Canal.The prong entered the "Hillsborough River" at the present eastern end of the straight portion of the Hillsboro Canal (dredged 1911–1914), which is the southern city limits.The river continued due south about four and a half miles (7.2 km) just inland of the coastal dune until it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean at the "Hillsborough Bar", now the Hillsboro Inlet.