LIVING HISTORY
16
VERO AT 100
the sheriff on March 2, 1925, State Rep. Anthony W. Young
was arrested, and the headlines read, “Legislator arrested in
Sheriff’s War on Vero’s Sunday Movie.” Young was collecting
tickets for the show, and he was also president of the
Vero Theatre Corporation. After this raid, the Palm Beach Post
printed: “There is a rumor on the streets of a proposed division
of St. Lucie County, in such wise, as to make two new
counties — one with Stuart as the county seat and one with
Sebastian as the county seat.” This discussion had been taking
place for several months.
The sheriff raided the theater four weeks in a row. On the
last raid on March 15, the sheriff, Young, and attorney Vocelle
stood on the theater stage and faced the audience to explain
their positions on the matter. The people of the north county
were outraged.
In a 1967 radio interview on WTTB, Vocelle spoke about his
participation in the division of the county and its roots in the
bitterness that he witnessed over the blue laws and the Vero
Theatre raids. He stated: “Well, that was one of the most interesting
political battles that I have ever engaged in. It began
— there had been some agitation. In fact, when I moved here
in 1924, there was some talk about it because Vero Beach and
Fort Pierce, there had been sort of a rivalry between them. In
fact, sometimes it got to be a little acrimonious.”
DIVISIONISTS
When St. Lucie was formed in 1905 from Brevard County,
Fort Pierce was designated as the county seat. In less than 20
years, the people in the northern part and the southern part of
the county wanted to separate and form two new counties to
allow the people to govern themselves for economic reasons.
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A delegation of 130 people from Vero, Wabasso, Quay (Winter Beach), and
Sebastian boarded three Pullman cars of the “Indian River County Special”
to support the county division bill and their representative Anthony W.
Young in Tallahassee. They boarded the train on May 4, 1925, and returned
on May 7 without a vote of approval for the division. It took three more
weeks before it was approved.
THE STUART MESSENGER
More than 200 citizens gathered at the bandstand on Fourth Street in Stuart
to discuss and approve the county division.
FORT PIERCE NEWS-TRIBUNE
The headlines portray what the people of Fort Pierce were feeling at the
time. They considered this fight to be “highly detrimental to the county.” Petitions
were being circulated throughout the county for the anti-divisionists.
INDIAN RIVER COUNTY MAIN LIBRARY ARCHIVES, INDIAN RIVER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY