Timeline • 1890 – Bocaratone settled. • 1896 –
Florida East Coast Railway begins operating. • 1909 – Bocaratone becomes part of newly created
Palm Beach County. • 1923 – Boca Raton Inlet bridge constructed. • 1924 • Town of "Boca Ratone" incorporated. • 1925 • Town of "Boca Raton"
incorporated. • 1926 •
Cloister resort built. • Chamber of Commerce founded. • 1928 – Water plant built. • 1964 – Boca Raton Theatre in business. • 1980 •
Pope John Paul II High School established. •
Town Center at Boca Raton opens. • 1981 – August: "
IBM (International Business Machines) introduces the
IBM PC from its Boca Raton factory." • Population: 61,492. • 1991 –
W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters relocated to Boca Raton from New York. • 1999 – W.R. Grace & Co. headquarters moves away from Boca Raton. • 2000 • Muvico cinema in business. • Population: 83,255 • 2001 –
Anthrax attack;
Robert Stevens dies. • 2004 – September:
Hurricane Frances and
Hurricane Jeanne occur. • 2012 • October 22:
United States presidential debate held in Boca Raton. • 2014 – Susan Haynie elected mayor. • 2017 •
Ted Deutch becomes
U.S. representative for
Florida's 22nd congressional district. • September:
Hurricane Irma occurs.
Early history 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. When Spain surrendered Florida to
Britain in 1763, the remaining Tequestas, along with other Indians who had taken refuge in the Florida Keys, were evacuated to
Cuba. In the 1770s,
Bernard Romans reported seeing both abandoned villages and no native population in the area. The area remained largely uninhabited for long afterwards, during the early years of Florida's incorporation in the United States. The first significant European settler to this area was Captain Thomas Moore Rickards in 1895, who resided in a house made of driftwood on the east side of the East Coast Canal, south of what is now the Palmetto Park Road bridge. He surveyed and sold land from the canal to beyond the railroad north of what is now Palmetto Park Road. Early settlement in the area increased shortly after
Henry Flagler's expansion of the
Florida East Coast Railway, connecting
West Palm Beach to Miami.
Addison Mizner's resort town Boca Raton as a city was the creation of architect
Addison Mizner. In 1920, Boca Raton was an unincorporated farming town with a population of 100. Instead of the existing Palmetto Park Road, the main street in Mizner's Boca was to be El Camino Real, 20 lanes wide, which Mizner fancifully translated as "The Royal Highway", All streets were to be at least wide. and later renamed the
Boca Raton Resort & Club. Today a
Ritz-Carlton, it is one of the only "5 star" hotels in Florida. The 1969 addition of its "pink tower" hotel building is visible from miles away on the
Intracoastal Waterway. Because of the end of the
Florida land boom of the 1920s and the
1926 Miami hurricane, the Mizner Development Corporation went into bankruptcy in 1927. 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), It is now the Camino Gardens subdivision one mile west of the Boca Raton Hotel. A red wooden bridge and remnants from the Watusi Geyser and Zambezi Falls, a 30-foot waterfall, from Africa USA can still be seen at the entrance to Camino Gardens. Ancient America was built surrounding a real
Native American burial mound. Today, the mound is still visible within the Boca Marina & Yacht Club neighborhood on
U.S. 1 near Yamato Road.
IBM 's former South Florida laboratories, where the
IBM PC was created, alongside
Yamato Road. In the late 1960s,
IBM announced their intentions to open a manufacturing plant in the area. In 1965, well before the extension of
I-95 into Southern Florida, IBM, working in secret with the Arvida corporation, quietly purchased several hundred acres of real estate west of the
CSX rail line and northwest of
Florida Atlantic University. Originally situated in unincorporated Palm Beach County, the site was annexed into Boca Raton almost a year following its dedication in 1970. Construction of IBM's main complex began in 1967, designed by
Marcel Breuer, and the manufacturing and office complex was dedicated in March 1970. The campus was designed with self-sufficiency in mind and sported its own
electrical substation,
water pumping station, and rail spur. By 1984 IBM was Palm Beach County's largest corporate employer, with 8,500 Boca Raton employees. Among other noteworthy IT accomplishments, such as the mass production of the
System/360 and development of the
Series/1 mainframe computers, IBM's main complex was the birthplace of the
IBM PC, which later evolved into the IBM
Personal System/2, developed in nearby
Delray Beach. Starting in 1987, IBM relocated its manufacturing for what became the IBM PC division to
Research Triangle Park in
Raleigh, North Carolina, and converted the manufacturing facilities into offices and laboratories, later producing products such as the
OS/2 operating system and VoiceType Dictation, later known as
ViaVoice voice-recognition
software. IBM maintained its facilities in the South Florida area until 1996, when the facility was closed and sold to Blue Lake Real Estate. 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. The site was later renamed the Boca Raton Innovation Campus (BRiC). Crocker Partners, noted for its development of
Mizner Park and
Office Depot headquarters, purchased BRiC in April 2018. What used to be IBM's Building 051, an annex separated from the former main IBM campus by Spanish River Boulevard, was donated to the Palm Beach County School District and converted into
Don Estridge High Tech Middle School. It is named after
Don Estridge, whose team was responsible for developing the
IBM PC. IBM returned in July 2001, opening the software development laboratory at Beacon Square off Congress Avenue.
Suburban expansion In 1991, the downtown outdoor shopping and dining center,
Mizner Park, was completed over the site of the old Boca Raton Mall. It has since become a cultural center for southern Palm Beach County. Featuring a landscaped central park between the two main roads (collectively called Plaza Real) with stores only on the outside of the roads, Mizner Park resembles a Mediterranean suburban "town center" with a more contemporary look. It features many restaurants and is home to the
Boca Raton Museum of Art, which moved to the new facility in 2001. In 2002, a new
amphitheater was built, replacing a smaller one and providing a large-capacity outdoor venue where concerts and other performances are held. The Mizner Park Cultural Center, an indoor performing arts/comedy show theater is located to the southwest of the amphitheater within the Mizner Park property. The
National Cartoon Museum was built on the southwest edge of Mizner Park in 1996. Open for six years, the museum relocated to its original home in
New York City in 2002. As development continued to focus to the west of the city in the 1980s and 1990s, the mall area known as
Town Center at Boca Raton became the geographic center of what is referred to as West Boca Raton, though this mall was not annexed into the city until 2004. Forbes ranked Boca's Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club the third most exclusive gated community in the US in 2017. Many mansions and estates have been built and reflect the high real estate values. 18.1% of homes for sale are within the $655,000–$966,000 range, 8.5% in the $966,000–$1.288 million range, and 11.9% in the $1.288 million plus range. Since the mid-2010s, there has been a developing boom such as the building of the Mandarin Oriental's Residences, remodeling of Downtown Boca Raton's Mizner Park, and development around Florida Atlantic University and Lynn University. On November 2, 2004, the voters of the Via Verde Association, Waterside, Deerhurst Association (Boca South), Marina Del Mar Association, Rio Del Mar Association (both originally Boca Del Mar communities), and Heatherwood of Boca Raton Condominium Association approved
annexation into the Boca Raton
city limits, increasing the city land area to . 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. ==Geography==