Poinciana (also known as Poinciana Mainland) was a planned community that was to be located along the Lostmans River in Monroe County,

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. Poinciana has been described as the Everglades's "most spectacular commercial enterprise" and "the prototype of all Florida scams".

History

The city was planned by the Tropical Florida Development Company (later Poinciana Development Company) of Miami in 1925, advertising the community as a future "Miami of the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...

". The city was to have been built on the north side of the mouth of the river, on 3 land sections totaling over 100 square miles. The project headquarters were located at Onion Key, a former

Calusa The Calusa ( , Calusa: *ka(ra)luś(i)) were a Native American people of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region. Previous Indigenous cultures had lived in the area for thousands o ...

settlement, where several portable houses were erected, along with docks and a small electrical station. Onion Key was chosen as it was covered by a

midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste. It may consist of animal bones, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human oc ...

, lifting it 5 feet above the water. The origin of Onion Key's name is disputed; local Totch Brown claimed it was from Gregorio Lopez eating his last onion there, while Charlton Tabeau claimed it was from an unidentified man who homesteaded the island with his wife and grew onions. The developers of the property used creative advertisements to promote the new city. These advertisements often featured exaggerated or false claims, such as the site having

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

, lime, and

coconut The coconut tree (''Cocos nucifera'') is a member of the palm tree family (biology), family (Arecaceae) and the only living species of the genus ''Cocos''. The term "coconut" (or the archaic "cocoanut") can refer to the whole coconut palm, ...

plants leftover from a Spanish settlement. Because of these campaigns, the company was able to sell almost 9,000 or 10,000 lots at Poinciana, many to owners who did not live in Florida. Many of these lots were located in mangrove forests, some over a mile from the river itself. The city was going to be linked to the Tamiami Trail via the Poinciana Trail, a planned 15-mile road that would have gone from the new city to what is now Loop Road (County Road 94). The road's construction was highly sought after to encourage settlement, with county engineers even joining the project. Poinciana was staffed by salesmen and the company brought potential customers on a road and boat trip to the city, however it is believed most customers never did actually visit the property. Company president William G. Blanchard and his family visited the town in June 1926, taking a committee from the county commissioners to review the planned site of the Poinciana Trail. A school named "Poinciana Park" was located in the western half of mainland Monroe County around this time, but it is unknown if this was connected to the development. The hurricane of 1926 destroyed all structures at Poinciana, and despite attempts to rebuild and continued newspaper advertising, the project was subsequently abandoned. A few employees moved the island's small electric station to a stretch of coast just north of the Lostmans River mouth and built some

tar paper Tar paper, roofing paper, felt paper, underlayment, or roofing tar paper is a heavy-duty paper used in construction. Tar paper is made by impregnating paper with tar, producing a waterproof material useful for roof construction. Tar paper is ...

shacks around it, but nothing became of this. In 1929, company official E. S. Rood was arrested and held for $1,000 bond on 5 charges of

mail fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical (e.g., the U.S. Postal Service) or electronic (e.g., a phone, a telegram, a fax, or the Internet) mail system to defraud another, and are U.S. fede ...

from deceptive promotional fliers the company distributed in the mail. He was scheduled to be tried before the United States District Court in Miami on April 22 that year. During the land acquisition process for the

Everglades National Park Everglades National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States that protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades in Florida. The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the Un ...

in the 1950s, the NPS was hindered by the many real estate title issues at the property; in 1958, the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...

'' reported that 1,350 people were still paying taxes on land owned in the "phantom town", and over 2,000 lots were still privately owned in 1960. The site was eventually made part of the park, Onion Key being used as a wilderness campsite before being made off-limits to the public. The second site of the electric station was later used as a ranger station but this too no longer exists.

References

{{Monroe County, Florida Former populated places in Monroe County, Florida Natural disaster ghost towns Proposed populated places in the United States Fraud in the United States Planned communities in Florida 1925 establishments in Florida 1926 disestablishments in Florida