Palm Bay Florida Since 1925
The city that grew out of a swamp, a railroad, and a 1959 land sale.
Tillman became Palm Bay in 1925. In 1959 General Development Corporation bought 41,000 acres west of the Indian River and started selling lots by mail. The drainage canals followed. So did 120,000 people. This is the record of how that happened, and what it cost.
Start here
- Pre-Columbian
The Ais people at Turkey Creek
Before there was a Tillman post office or a General Development Corporation street grid, the freshwater springs feeding Turkey Creek drew the Ais, a non-agricultural coastal nation whose shell middens still mark the creek's mouth. They were here when Ponce de León's ships passed in 1513 and they were gone by 1763.
- GDC era
General Development Corporation buys Palm Bay, 1959
In 1959 General Development Corporation purchased roughly 41,000 acres west of the Indian River and launched what would become the largest planned subdivision in Florida history. The company sold lots by mail to out-of-state buyers, drained 40,000 acres of swamp, and reshaped southern Brevard County completely.
- Early settlement
Tillman: what Palm Bay was called before 1925
For roughly forty years before it became Palm Bay, the settlement on the western side of the Indian River was called Tillman. The name belonged to a postmaster, lasted from the 1880s through 1925, and outlived the citrus economy that gave the village its first reason to exist.
More from the archive
- Naming history
The 1925 renaming to Palm Bay
Tillman became Palm Bay in 1925, at the peak of the Florida land boom, named after a sabal-palm-bordered cove in the Indian River Lagoon. The new name took, the land boom collapsed the next year, and the town stayed quiet for thirty years.
- Civic history
The 1987 Palm Bay shootings
On April 23, 1987, William Cruse killed six people and wounded fourteen at two Palm Bay shopping centers. Two of the dead were Palm Bay police officers responding to the scene. Cruse was tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and died in prison before his sentence was carried out. The case is a fact of Palm Bay's history that the city has not erased and we do not sensationalize.
- Hurricanes
Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit Palm Bay, September 2004
In September 2004, two hurricanes made landfall in close succession on Florida's Atlantic coast and crossed directly over Palm Bay. Frances landed September 5; Jeanne landed September 25. Palm Bay's inland location did not protect it. Damage to housing, infrastructure, and trees was severe. Recovery took years.
- Hydrology
The 80-canal, 180-mile drainage grid that made Palm Bay buildable
Palm Bay sits on 40,000 acres of land that was, in 1922, mostly seasonal wetland. A drainage district started cutting canals that year; General Development Corporation expanded the system through the 1960s. The result is roughly 180 miles of canals discharging into Turkey Creek and the Indian River Lagoon. It worked. It's also poisoning the lagoon.
- Modern era
The Bayfront Community Redevelopment Area
Palm Bay's eastern waterfront, the original 19th-century Tillman footprint, has been the focus of a Community Redevelopment Area since 2003. The CRA is a $50 million-plus reinvestment effort aimed at the part of the city the GDC era left behind. Progress has been slow.
- Modern era
Bayside Lakes: the 1990s master-planned community on Palm Bay's southern edge
Bayside Lakes is the master-planned residential development that anchors Palm Bay's southern flank along Malabar Road and Babcock Street. It opened in the late 1990s, departs from the GDC-era platting pattern, and represents the first major non-GDC build-out inside Palm Bay's city limits.
- GDC era
GDC's 1990 bankruptcy and what it left behind
General Development Corporation filed for Chapter 11 in 1990. Three executives went to federal prison. Tens of thousands of lot buyers were left holding contracts on property worth less than they had paid. The reorganization took years. The street grid stayed.
- GDC era
GDC's sales-by-mail era, 1960s through 1980s
General Development Corporation sold tens of thousands of Palm Bay lots to out-of-state buyers who never visited the property. The pitch was $10 down, $10 a month, a quarter-acre of Florida. The reality, for many buyers, was a lot they could never resell, on a street that would never get utilities, owned through a contract that gave them almost no equity until the final payment cleared.
- Naming history
Indian River City: what Palm Bay was almost called in the 1950s
Between Tillman and modern Palm Bay there was a brief mid-century episode when the community considered renaming itself Indian River City. The name appears in some 1950s records but never fully took. By 1960, when General Development arrived, Palm Bay was back.
Common questions about Palm Bay history
- What was Palm Bay called before it became Palm Bay?
For about forty years it was called Tillman. The name came from John Tillman, the first prominent European-American settler in the area, who arrived in the late 1870s and built a wharf at the mouth of Turkey Creek that became a steamboat stop. The Tillman post office opened in 1885 and kept the name until 1925.
- Why was the town renamed Palm Bay in 1925?
Tillman's residents wanted to participate in Florida's 1920s land boom, and the name "Tillman" meant nothing to the northern buyers the boom depended on. Locals petitioned to change it, and the post office officially became Palm Bay in 1925. The new name referred to a sabal-palm-bordered cove in the Indian River Lagoon near the eastern foot of present-day Palm Bay Road.
- Who turned Palm Bay from a small town into a city?
General Development Corporation, run by the Mackle brothers of Miami, bought roughly 41,000 acres of flatwoods and swamp west of the Indian River in 1959 for about $1.7 million. GDC platted the land as Port Malabar and sold lots by mail to out-of-state buyers, typically a quarter-acre for around $10 down and $10 a month. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990, and three executives pleaded guilty to fraud that same year.
- Who lived at Turkey Creek before European settlers arrived?
The Ais, a non-agricultural coastal nation, used the freshwater springs at the head of Turkey Creek for centuries, leaving shell middens still visible at the creek's mouth. They were present when Ponce de León's expedition passed in 1513 and lived on fish, shellfish, and lagoon resources rather than farming. The Ais were gone as a distinct people by roughly 1760-1763, ended by epidemic disease and slave raids.