The Forgotten Groves of Fruita

Little is known about the once small town called Fruita. Located just north of what is now Hobe Sound, Fruita was a small farming and fishing community surprisingly nestled between Dixie Highway and the Jupiter narrows north of Hobe Sound. A beautiful hilly landscape coated in fertile soil, fruit trees, colorful gardens, pines and palmettos. This community was prime territory for farming fruits and growing locally famous citrus but also the site permitted easy access to the abundant fisheries and the multiple nearby inlets such as Palm Beach, Jupiter, Stuart, or even the St. Lucie.

1950s aerial photograph of the Dixie Highway

   Fruita first began appearing on maps around 1910 as the small section of land nestled in between the Hanson Grant and the Gomez Grant in Northern Palm Beach County and after 1925, Martin County. The town boasted its own railroad station, packing house, general store, gas station, hotel, hunting lodge, houses and multiple clandestine enterprises going on behind closed doors including rumrunning and liquor distilling. In the mid-1920’s, the infant town of Picture City, a couple miles south of Fruita, was attempting to create a new Hollywood of the Southeast. The innovative town designers had every intention of hiring the local working community, most of whom already worked for the wealthy on the long and narrow barrier island named Jupiter Island. Advertisements from 1925 describe the lush land in the procurement of 8,000 acres of the Gomez Grant with natural wonder, almost forcing the reader to want to purchase. The Gomez Grant came from an 1815 land grant from the King and Queen of Spain to Don Eusebio Gomez, originally a 12,000 acre parcel which later became Hobe Sound and Jupiter Island. “No place on the continent, or in this U.S.A., vies with it in point of beauty, natural advantages, conveniences of access or any of the appurtenances of a modern city. It is rolling ground – is closest to the Gulf Stream and is the highest point on the Atlantic Coast between Jacksonville and Key West. It extends four miles along the Indian River – the most beautiful of all of Florida’s inland water…” (Apfel 9). This description includes the advertising of the land consisting of Olympia, Gomez, Picture City, Fruita, and Salerno. Ultimately, Picture city failed after a nine month attempt at success produced minimal interest or investment. Even with this short-lived excitement, Fruita continued to thrive as a productive agricultural community that coincidentally attracted some of Florida’s most wild pioneer personalities.

   After the 1924 burials of four local men at a family cemetery near Fruita, one of whom was John Ashley, Fruita was soon forgotten. John Ashley was known locally as an innocent man having only killed two souls out of self-defense and frontier justice. However, he was known nationwide as having a notorious gang of men who would kill anyone for some cash, beginning in 1911 with the murder of Seminole Indian, Desoto Tiger for some otter pelts. Families still lived locally and talked fondly of Fruita decades after the fall of John Ashley in 1924. But what caused Fruita to stop existing if it was a successful community? Two theories state that either an angry mob comprised of fed-up neighbors burned the town and the Ashley homesteads with it after the January 9^th, 1924 moonshine-still raid conducted by Fred Baker and his posse or the town burned later from natural causes.

In reality, after the moonshine still raid, the Ashley homestead, the grocery store and one of John Ashley’s companion’s cars was purposely burned out of anger. Some residents of Hobe Sound recounted that years after the infamous November 1^st, 1924 murder of the four boys on a Sebastian bridge, the remaining houses of Joe Ashley, Bill Ashley, and Mrs. Wesley Mobley were all burned at different occasions. Locals recounted seeing some houses still standing from their cars on the Dixie Highway up into the 1960’s. Lightered pine and old Florida building structures never mixed well when the element of weather was constantly peering through the thicket. What is known about Fruita lives in the memory of the local people whose parents and grandparents passed down their oral histories.

   One such community is that of the African American and Bahamian pioneers who lived and worked in Fruita in the early twentieth century. In a time when Florida was full of racism and illegal liquor, the local pioneer African American and Bahamian families of Fruita, Gomez, New Monrovia, Banner Lake and Hobe Sound had formed a symbiotic relationship with the working class families of Fruita. This connection angered a lot of county and state government employees who specifically targeted the “lawless” northern portion of Palm Beach County. Families like the Ashley’s employed workers from these local communities forming faithful friendships that saved lives on both ends.

   “Fruita lost its identity when the highway was moved but the hammocks along the waterway are remembered by old-timers as a rich farming section...” (Hartman 6). This was just the beginning of the end of Fruita. Over time, land has been bought and sold, leveled and logged. What was once a magically fertile and productive land now plays host to golf courses and Publix plazas. Thankfully, local residents are still working hard at preserving the breathtaking vistas of Martin County which oftentimes remain hidden from the unobservant eye. Fruita may be lost to time but the fruit industry that blossomed here still can be remembered when an unsuspecting mango tree or pineapple grove is proudly spotted relaxing in a yard.

"Spicer's Grove Fruita - 5 miles south of Salerno. Beans between trees." Spicer Grove was established in about 1917 by Edward E. Spicer, and was located in the Gomez Tract adjoining Hobe Sound. In 1924 it was noted as being the finest grove in Florida. Image in the collection of the Historical Society of Martin County.

Citations:

Apfel, Charles. “Picture City: On the Atlantic Ocean, Indian River and the Dixie Highway,  

Between Palm Beach and Stuart.” The Miami Herald, August 23, 1925, p. 9.

Hartman, Mary. “Martin County News.” Fort Pierce News Tribune, February 13, 1953, p. 6.