PEANUT ISLAND
Email: TBeckel1@comcast.net
Boca Raton, Florida
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The following links will take you to the photos that I have taken on Peanut Island:
The current Palm Beach Maritime Museum on Peanut Island which is accessible by ferry boat used to be the old Coast Guard Station built in the early 1900's and was the subject of our investigation.
History
Peanut Island was originally created in 1918 as a result of material excavated when the Lake Worth Inlet was created. Originally called Inlet Island, Peanut Island amounted to only ten (10) acres. By 1923 the Port was using the island as a spoil site for the maintenance of the inlet and the Port shipping channel. . The name Peanut was given to the island when the State gave permission for use of the island as a terminal for shipping peanut oil. Plans for this enterprise were abandoned in 1946, but the name was retained.
The building on Peanut Island was also used as a Coast Guard Station. The Secret Service took over this building in the 60s, when JFK cooled his heels in Palm Beach and built the old John F. Kennedy Bomb Shelter. It seems difficult to imagine the panic that swept the United States at the height of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a visit to the John F. Kennedy Bomb Shelter located on Peanut Island is a haunting reality of just how close the world came to nuclear war. Peanut Island was only a quick helicopter ride from where the Kennedy estate once rested and is located just outside of West Palm Beach, Florida. As a frightening reminder of how close we came to World War III, the fact that the bomb shelter is now leased out and open for tours shows how far we have come since those turbulent years.
In 1991, the Port sold the northern half of the island to the Florida Inland Navigation District as a spoil site for the Intracoastal Waterway maintenance dredging. Today, as a result of continued maintenance dredging of the inlet and the Intracoastal Waterway, Peanut Island comprises approximately eighty (80) acres. The primary use of the island will continue as a spoil site but the Port Authority and FIND have generously made the perimeter of the island available to the public as a park through a long-term arrangement with Palm Beach County. This unique eighty acre tropical park is situated in the Intracoastal Waterway near the Lake Worth Inlet in close proximity to Phil Foster Park, the City of Riviera Beach, and the Port of Palm Beach.
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