Mango Grove Shaped Early History of Mangonia Park

By Bob Davidsson
        In an effort to avoid future annexation by the neighboring City of West Palm Beach, Charles Roebuck and a delegation of neighbors living near Voss Road (Australian Avenue) petitioned the State of Florida in 1947 to incorporate a new city called "Magnolia Park".
        As fate would have it, the state denied the petition. Magnolia Park already was designated as an unincorporated neighborhood on the eastern shore of Lake Apopka in Orange County.
        As a compromise, the fledgling city was incorporated as  "Mangonia Park". Within the newly named city was a largely overgrown grove of mango trees. This grove, neglected by the passage of time, became the name origin for the town - "Mangonia" or mango park.
        By the late 1940s, few residents remembered the origin of the mango grove or the name of the person who planted them. By tracing their roots, the early history of Mangonia Park is discovered,

The Mango Grove of Rev. Elbridge Gale
        "Mangonia" was originally the name given to 160 acres of homesteaded land by the Rev. Elbridge Gale in what is today the Northwood Hills.
        After a career as a professor of agriculture at Kansas State Agricultural College, Rev. Gale, a native New Englander, retired and traveled from his McPherson, Kansas, home to the mainly unsettled west shore of Lake Worth in November 1884 for the purpose of applying farming techniques learned in the academic world in South Florida's subtropical climate.
        Gale experimented with the creation of hybrid mangos at his Mangonia homestead. He produced the Haden mango by crossing native varieties with imported Indian mango seedlings.
        Between 1885 and 1890, he was joined by his wife, Elizabeth; his son, George; and daughters Ella and Hattie with their families at his Northwood Hills homestead.
        Hattie Gale was 16 years old and a student at Kansas State Agricultural College in 1885 when she arrived in the Palm Beaches. She taught school for three months at the "Little Red School House" which opened in March 1886. She became the first school teacher on the isle of Palm Beach.
        Hattie returned to Kansas to complete her college education. She became engaged to faculty member William Sanders in Manhattan, Kansas. The couple were married by her father, Rev. Gale, upon their return Palm Beaches on Aug. 24, 1890.

The Short Life of  'Mangonia'
        Rev. Gale's son, George, was a carpenter and helped his family build the first log cabin in Mangonia's Northwood Hills. The site of homestead was later designated as 29th Street by the Postal Service.
        George Gale cut pine logs for the cabin and hauled them from the west shore of Lake Worth. Shingles were salvaged from ship wrecks along the ocean shore of Palm Beach. The homestead was topped by a steep roof made of woven palmetto fronds.
        The ambitious son of Rev. Gale arrived in "Mangonia" in February 1885. He established a pineapple farm in the Northwood Hills, and was soon platting the family's land for sale as parcels in the community he hoped to incorporate as the town of "Mangonia".
        The creation of the City of West Palm Beach in 1894 ended the short life of the Gale family's "Mangonia" as an independent community. Most of the Gale property in the Northwood Hills was within the West Palm Beach city limits, with the remainder becoming part of Mangonia Park after 1947.   
        Elbridge Gale continued his interest in education by serving one term as the Dade County Superintendent of Schools. Prior to the creation of Palm Beach County in 1909, Dade County encompassed a vast area from the St. Lucie Inlet south to Biscayne Bay. The town of Juno was the county seat from February 1889 through 1899 when it returned to Miami.
        The Dade County Board of Education was established June 27, 1885. At its organizational meeting, it consisted of a superintendent of schools and three board members.
        The first order of business of the Board of Education was the division of Dade County schools into four districts. District #1 included the Palm Beaches and its early schoolhouses built along the shores of Lake Worth during the 1880s and 1890s.
        Rev. Gale also served as the first president of the "Christian Union," a nonsectarian league of churches established in the fledgling communities along Lake Worth. The organization met in the Mangonia school, established by the Gale family.
        The Gale homestead and neighboring farms were purchased by the Pinewood Development Corporation in 1920. A year later the corporation platted the first phase of the "Northwood" subdivision which would become known as "Old Northwood".
        The founder of "Mangonia" died Nov. 4, 1907. Both Rev. Gale and his wife are buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach. Two of their children, George and Hattie, joined them at this final resting place in 1922.
(c.) Davidsson. 2018.
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