Lake Worth, part of the intracoastal waterway, was named after Brig. Gen. William Jenkins Worth, who came to Florida in 1841 to try to settle military problems with the Indians and was later second in command of U.S. troops in our war with Mexico. Worth commanded the thousands of U.S. troops in Florida’s principal Seminole Indian War, which terminated in 1842. Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, the city of Lake Worth, and Fort Worth, Texas were also named after him.        

          Originally, the lake was a landlocked body of fresh water until early settlers created the first inlet. It was a lake so clear and clean that the bottom was easily visible even at its deepest point. After August Lang, who lived near the site of Palm Beach’s Old Bethesda Church during and after the Civil War, the first permanent settlers of the lake area came in 1873.

         Boats were the mainstay of early life on the lake, providing not only transportation of people, but mail, food, and the necessities for building a community. It was because of the importance of boat transportation that all of the earliest arrivals settled on or near the lake shore Homesteads were often widely spaced, with the nearest neighbors being a long distance away This made life lonely for many settlers, and to alleviate the isolation, they gathered together for picnics several times a year.

          The first picnics were held on Christmas and the Fourth of July, two important holidays on the lake. People would travel for miles, sometimes having to stop overnight on the way, to enjoy the pleasure of each others’ company. A few houses were bustling with people, as shown by the account of a young woman who came to her family’s home on the lake in 1876, just after finishing college: