Vero Beach

The town of Vero was chartered on June 13, 1919, renaming itself Vero Beach when it became the county seat of newly formed Indian River County in 1925. The county itself was carved out of St. Lucie County that year, driven in part by local booster Anthony Young's success persuading the Florida Senate that the area deserved its own identity. What followed was a land boom decade — and then the double blow of the 1926 hurricane season and the Great Depression, which leveled speculative values and forced a slower, more selective pattern of development that in retrospect shaped Vero Beach's character permanently.

Waldo Sexton, who arrived in 1914, became one of the most influential figures in early Vero Beach development, driving citrus, dairy, and real estate industries while creating eccentric cultural landmarks like the Driftwood Inn. The commitment to low-density planning and deed restrictions — Vero Beach formally prohibited high-rise development along its beach corridor — earned the city a reputation as a refined, unhurried alternative to the more commercial Treasure Coast cities to its south. That reputation has compounded for a century.

The arts infrastructure followed the affluence. The Vero Beach Theatre Guild launched in 1958, Riverside Theatre opened in 1974, and the Center for the Arts (now the Vero Beach Museum of Art) opened debt-free in 1986 after local donors raised $2.5 million. Today Indian River County remains one of the most demographically affluent coastal counties in Florida, with a year-round population of roughly 170,000 that swells significantly in winter months with seasonal residents from the Northeast and Midwest.