Vero Beach History Guide: From the Gifford Homestead to Dodgertown

Vero began as a pioneer settlement in the late 1880s, became the City of Vero in 1919 and was renamed Vero Beach in 1925, when it became the seat of the new Indian River County (City of Vero Beach; city history page).

The name traces to the Gifford household. Henry T. Gifford built a house in 1887 that now stands near Vero Beach City Hall, and he ran a citrus grove plus the first store, post office and railroad ticket office; the city says the name is often attributed to his wife Sarah, who suggested Vero for its Latin meaning, to speak the truth (City of Vero Beach history page). A post office named Vero opened at the Gifford home in 1891 (state marker, City of Vero Beach).

The town itself was a land company project. In 1912 the Indian River Farms Company, a group of Iowa and Illinois businessmen, bought 44,000 acres in what is now Indian River County for a land reclamation project, and the final plat of the original Town of Vero was adopted in 1913 (City of Vero Beach). The state marker says Herman Zeuch of Davenport, Iowa visited the Vero area in 1909 and saw land that could be drained and sold to citrus farmers and cattle raisers; the planned drainage program was finished in 1917, and the company was dissolved in 1936 (state marker). The Main Relief Canal guide follows that drainage network, and the citrus pioneers and incorporation guide covers the years from grove to city.

Vero also crossed the water early. On Labor Day 1920 a parade of Model T cars rolled over the first bridge across the Indian River, which made Vero the first community with a bridge to Orchid Island; tolls ran from 5 cents for a pedestrian to 35 cents for a two-ton truck (state marker, The Bridges). The pioneer era guide, the Vero Beach trivia guide and the notable people guide carry these early names and firsts.

Two much older stories sit under Vero Beach: a Second Seminole War supply post later called Fort Vinton, and the Old Vero Ice Age site exposed by canal digging in 1915.

Fort Vinton began in April 1839 as Fort or Post No. 2, a supply outpost about twenty miles northwest of Fort Pierce (state marker, Site of Fort Vinton). It was abandoned by 1842, reopened early in 1850 under the name Fort Vinton for Captain John R. Vinton, who had served in the area and died in the Mexican War, and was abandoned again in May 1850. The marker stands at the S.R. 60 and S.R. 609 intersection near I-95, and the fort site lies a few miles southwest of it. The Fort Vinton guide covers the post and how its site has been traced.

The Old Vero site came to light in 1915, when construction of a drainage canal in Vero exposed well preserved late Pleistocene plants and animals together with human remains and artifacts (Florida Atlantic University). In 2016 archaeologists from Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch found what they believe are bones of an extinct bison, 13,000 to 14,000 years old, about 10 feet below the surface. Four Vero Beach guides go deeper here: the Vero Man 1915 discovery guide, the Old Vero Ice Age site excavations guide, the Ice Age animals of Vero guide and the Vero mammoth engraving guide.

Naval Air Station Vero Beach was a World War II Navy and Marine flight training base commissioned on 24 November 1942 on the city airport, the ground now under Vero Beach Regional Airport (state marker, U.S. Naval Station Vero Beach).

The station trained more than 2,700 men plus 300 WAVES and women Marines, first for dive bombers and later for night fighters, and records show 237,102 hours of flight time between the first flight in December 1942 and 2 September 1945 (state marker). The Vero Beach base went into caretaker status in June 1946 and was deeded back to the city. The Naval Air Station Vero Beach guide covers the base in detail.

The airport predates the Navy: it was finished in 1929 and dedicated on March 3 and 4, 1930, and it still covers about 1,660 acres, over 20 percent of the land inside Vero Beach city limits, after land sales to Piper Aircraft, the Brooklyn Dodgers and FlightSafety International (Vero Beach Regional Airport FAQ). Piper followed the Navy onto the field in 1957, when Fred Weick set up its development center and manufacturing plant in Vero Beach (Piper Aircraft). The Fred Weick and Piper Cherokee guide, the Bud Holman guide and the airline service history guide pick up the airport story after the war.

The Brooklyn Dodgers came to Vero Beach in 1948 because local business leader Bud Holman persuaded them to set up a spring training facility in Vero Beach, and they left for Arizona after the 2008 spring (state marker, Baseball and Dodgertown).

The city history page dates the Dodgers decision to 1947, when the club picked the former Vero Beach Naval Air Station as its permanent spring training site (City of Vero Beach). Dodgertown became the first racially integrated spring training camp in the South, and Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella trained there (state marker). Walter O'Malley privately built the 6,500 seat Holman Stadium in 1953, and teams that trained at Dodgertown won 6 World Championships and 14 National League pennants.

The ending came in steps. The Dodgers sold Dodgertown to Indian River County in 2001, leased it back until 2008, then moved spring training to Arizona; in 2012 the O'Malley family returned to run Historic Dodgertown as a year round multi-sport complex at 4000 26th Street (state marker). The Bud Holman guide covers the man who brought the club, and the guide to why the Dodgers left Vero Beach covers the sale and the move.

Gifford High School grew from a school for Black children in Gifford, added high school grades in 1938 and served until integration in 1969, when it graduated its last class and became a middle school (state marker, Gifford High School Sundial Landmark).

Its roots go back to 1901, when William Edward Geoffrey, a railroad worker from Darlington, South Carolina, bought eighty acres in Gifford and donated part of it for a park and a school for Black children (state marker). That Gifford School first taught grades one through six on 38th Lane east of what is now U.S. Highway 1, and older students had to travel to Fort Pierce for high school; the Gifford School expanded to include a high school in 1938.

In 1952 the Indian River County School Board paid for a new Gifford high school building at 45th Street and 28th Court. Its original facade survives on the Gifford Middle School campus with a sundial given by the Class of 1964, the last physical pieces of the old Gifford High School (state marker). The Gifford High School guide carries the full story.

The biggest open chapter is Three Corners, the 38-acre former municipal power plant site at the base of the 17th Street (Alma Lee Loy) bridge, which the City of Vero Beach is still trying to redevelop (City of Vero Beach, Three Corners).

The Vero Beach City Council adopted a master concept plan for Three Corners on February 1, 2022, after a charrette with the planning firm DPZ CoDesign, and voters had to approve a charter change because the site is one of 26 city properties that Section 5.05 of the charter shields from commercial lease, and voters approved that change by 79% on November 8, 2022 (City of Vero Beach). On April 22, 2025 the council chose Clearpath Services of Bloomington, Indiana as preferred developer; Clearpath then formed a new master development entity with Madison Marquette, and the council sent staff into a negotiation period. The council directed the City Manager and City Attorney to negotiate a master development agreement and place it on a later council agenda for approval. The same page marks the step to enter into a development agreement as completed but describes only the proposal process under it and posts no approved agreement, so the posted status is unclear. Last verified: October 14, 2026, on the City of Vero Beach Three Corners page.

Dates in the Vero Beach record do not always agree, and that matters for anyone checking a plaque against a website. The city history page says the railroad reached the Vero settlement in 1893, while the state station marker says the line reached Sebastian in 1893 and Fort Pierce in 1894, bypassing Vero, with the Vero station a stop by 1903 (state marker, Vero Beach Railway Station). The naval air station marker gives 2,500 acres, while the Vero Beach airport FAQ says about 2,300 acres and a 1947 return to the city (airport FAQ). The Big Blue power plant guide, the municipal electric utility guide, the Indian River Shores electric dispute guide and the Vero Beach centennial 2019 guide cover the more recent decades.

The 21 Vero Beach history guides divide into the pioneer town, the deep past, the airport and Dodgertown years, Gifford, and the utility era; the table maps each question to its key date and guide.

A few Vero Beach guides cut across the timeline: the Vero Beach trivia guide collects firsts such as the 1920 bridge to Orchid Island, the Waldo Sexton guide covers the builder behind several beachside landmarks, and the airline service history guide follows passenger flights at the airport the Navy left behind. The Vero Beach Railway Station, moved to Pocahontas Park in 1984 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, is used as an exhibit center for Indian River County history (state marker).