The last two essays, number 13 and 14, featured two of my father’s largest customers for his pumps, farm implements and general machine shop work: the Butts family, and the Japanese Yamato farmers of Boca Raton. Between them they owned and farmed approximately 6,000 acres of what is now Boca Raton.

The Boca Raton Hotel owned much of the rest of the land in Boca, and was another major customer of my Dad’s. He provided the maintenance, welding and machine shop services for most of the equipment at the Hotel and their golf courses. Built by Mizner in 1926, the Hotel quickly went into bankruptcy and was bought by Clarence Geist of Philadelphia in 1927 who made it a private club. Most of the residents of Boca Raton at the time were dependent on Mr.Geist and his club for their jobs. To keep his hotel taxes down he organized his own employees, living in his own employee compound, into a majority voting bloc and quickly took over the town government. His control continued into the early forties when the federal government stepped in and made his hotel the housing for military officers being trained at the newly constructed Boca Raton airfield.

Meanwhile, Deerfield developed along a different path. A considerable amount of land in Deerfield was also owned by one family, the Kester family of Pompano. However, there were many smaller land owners and farmers in the Deerfield area such as the Butlers, the Jones, the Vickers, the Wiles, the Bournes, the Gaskins, the McDougalds, the Ellers and others. However the Kesters owned the most land and the only bank in the area: the Pompano State Farmers Bank. The Kester family also did some housing development. In fact most of the early homes in Pompano and Deerfield were “Kester homes”, and were distinguished by their clapboard wood siding, always painted white, with storm shutters of varying colors to distinguish them one from the other. You still see a few of them around today. In fact one is located across the street from Deerfield Elementary School’s northwest corner parking lot.

Incidentally, Deerfield got its name from the local Seminole Indians who hunted this area and named it Deerfield because it was a large flat meadow land heavily populated by local deer. And it may come as a surprise to many to learn that up until the 1940’s Deerfield had a considerably larger population than Boca Raton. Originally it was because the Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC) trains stopped in Deerfield along the south bank of the Hillsboro Canal to get water for their steam engines. The FEC built houses here for their employees who made sure the water tanks were always full. Because the trains had to stop, Deerfield became a convenient place to load and unload passengers, as well as to load farm products going north and supplies coming down south. Therefore many farmers, merchants and the likes ended up living in the town of Deerfield, which resulted in a school, three grocery stores, two hotels, some churches and various shops serving a population measured in the hundreds. Meanwhile, Boca Raton for much of its early history was just a village two miles north of the Hillsboro River consisting of a few dozen permanent residents who primarily shopped, worshipped and went to school in Deerfield.

David Eller