LIVING HISTORY
36
would soon be a major metropolitan area. Thousands and
thousands of new residents would make Stuart and the new
county the most prosperous community on the East Coast of
Florida. All they needed was a county of their own, but who
would give it to them?
West Palm Beach and its Chamber of Commerce appeared
to hold the winning hand politically. They opposed secession.
An effort to get a bill through the 1925 Legislature to create a
new county for the ambitious Stuart gang was going nowhere,
and though it was not generally known, this would be
their only chance. Only a few prognosticators were beginning
to sense the approaching cusp of a crash when buyers at the
end of the line would begin defaulting on contracts. No one
could be certain, but Florida had reached the top of its boom.
On the ride back down, the view would not be the same.
After 1925, not a single new county would be formed within
the state.
Toward the end of that legislative session, the Stuart boosters
found a champion for their cause. He was the chubby,
childless, 40-year-old man who had dwelt in the Governor’s
Mansion for a little more than four months. John W. Martin
had only a fourth-grade education, but that didn’t mean he
wasn’t smart. During his years as a traveling tobacco salesman,
he taught himself law at night and passed the bar exam.
He may have been raised poor, but he was proud of his heritage.
Both of his grandfathers had served in Congress — the
Confederate Congress. Martin was a jovial, likable, sociable
man who loved to entertain a crowd with stories. For the
most part he tamped down an explosive temper and a mean
streak that sometimes escaped during political campaigns.
MARTIN MONIKER
Suggested county names like Inlet and Golden Gate did not
catch on, so it was a stroke of genius when one of the Stuart
lobbyists came up with a suggestion: “Say there, governor,
how would you like to name our new county after yourself?”
If that weren’t enough to win him over, the deal was sweetened
with a share of the management profits for a new hotel
being constructed on Stuart’s waterfront: the Dixie Pelican
Hotel. Martin jumped at the double-sided proposal.
The young governor’s support for the new Martin County
was the trump card the boosters needed in their high stakes
political poker game. They had brought $30,000 in “legislative
sweetening” to the table — an enormous sum for the
times — but history has forgotten where they spent that cash.
Wherever it went, Palm Beach’s opposition folded its hand.
On Thursday, May 28, 1925, a special edition of the South
Florida Developer published in Stuart proclaimed in monumental
linotype: MARTIN COUNTY WINS.
Incredibly, the boosters’ first big dream had come true, but
all the other sure-bet dreams failed to follow. There was no
massive infusion of investment capital in their new community
and no population explosion. Instead of racing into
prosperity, Martin County left the starting line with four flat
tires and an empty gas tank. As the rest of Florida collapsed
around them, the boosters lost it all, just like the big boys
down in Miami. Only the Stuart gang never got to enjoy the
temporary riches on the wild ride up. The depths of their
disillusion can only be imagined.
John W. Martin’s political career followed the downward
graph of the county he gave his name. Even after it became
clear to all but the blindest optimists that the boom was
busting all around, Martin kept on cheerleading: “The sun
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