Waldo Sexton in Vero Beach, Florida

Waldo Sexton (1885-1967) was a Vero Beach pioneer and civic leader who grew citrus, sold land and built some of the town's best known tourist buildings.

The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Driftwood Inn and Restaurant, prepared for the National Park Service, calls Sexton an important personality in the vitality and growth of Vero Beach. It says he was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, graduated from Purdue University's School of Agriculture in 1911 and took a job selling tilling machines. In 1918 he married Elsebeth Martens, and the couple had four children. He died in 1967 at the age of 82.

Vero Beach honored him while he was alive. The nomination says the city held a Waldo Sexton Day in 1958 that called him one of Indian River County's outstanding citizens, with a parade, concerts, a free barbecue dinner for the 5,000 in attendance, a street dance and the dedication of Sexton Plaza. The City of Vero Beach's centennial timeline lists Sexton Plaza and Waldo Sexton Day among its 1950s events. The nomination also records how others described him, from one of the most colorful persons that Florida has ever known to an outrageous, old-time eccentric.

Sexton came to Vero on a 1914 sales trip to Florida and decided to stay and work for the Indian River Farms Company.

The National Register nomination describes the Indian River Farms Company, based in Vero, as incorporated in 1912 and soon draining thousands of acres, many of which were planted in citrus. By 1917 Sexton was an independent citrus farmer, setting out 10,000 orange trees his first year. He operated the Indian River Products Company, a grove maintenance service, was president of the Oslo Citrus Growers Association, a cooperative packing house, and helped organize the Indian River Citrus League. The nomination adds that he developed three avocado varieties, one of which the U.S. Department of Agriculture named Sexton.

Land and cattle were part of the same Vero Beach career. Sexton established the Vero Beach Realty Company in 1914, helped organize the Vero Beach Real Estate Board in 1923 and served as its president for a number of years, and was a partner in the McKee Sexton Land Company and the Royal Park Company. In 1924 he established the Vero Beach Dairy, the first dairy in Indian River County, and he crossed Guinea bulls with Brahman cows in search of cattle suited to Florida's heat and insects.

Sexton co-founded McKee Jungle Gardens with Cleveland industrialist Arthur McKee, and the state historical marker dates its founding to 1932.

The McKee Botanical Garden history says land developers Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton purchased the 80-acre tropical hammock in 1922 intending to cultivate citrus, then judged the land too special in its native state to disturb. They employed landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, an associate of the Olmsted Brothers firm, to lay out streams, ponds and trails. The National Register nomination says Sexton was reportedly the idea man for the early 1930s attraction, and the city's centennial timeline lists the opening of McKee Jungle Gardens among Vero Beach events of the 1930s.

Florida Historical Marker 635, placed in 1998 at 350 U.S. 1, records an aviary, resident monkeys, an alligator named Ole Mac and the Cathedral of Palms, a stand of more than 300 royal palms. At its height the garden attracted 100,000 visitors annually, but it closed in 1976. The garden's own history says it was sold to condominium developers and all but 18 acres were developed; the marker credits the Indian River Land Trust and the citizens of Indian River County with saving those 18 acres, and notes a National Register listing in January 1998. November 18, 2001 marked the formal dedication of the restored McKee Botanical Garden, whose Hall of Giants and Spanish Kitchen, the garden says, have been restored to Sexton's original vision.

On the beach Sexton built the Driftwood Inn about 1935, the Ocean Grill in 1941 and the Driftwood's restaurant in 1947.

The National Register nomination says the Driftwood Inn was originally built as a four-room summer beach house for the Sexton family and was soon operated by Mrs. Sexton as a small resort hotel. Because no restaurant was nearby, she began cooking breakfast for guests in the family kitchen, and that success led to the adjacent restaurant, built in 1947. The National Park Service record gives the address as 3150 Ocean Dr. Sexton kept expanding the complex with an office and a row of fishing shacks in 1949 and a 15-unit apartment building in 1963, and his son Ralph built the Cervantes Apartment Building in 1965. The Driftwood Resort became a time share in 1979, and by 1991 it was generating $2 million a year for the local economy, the nomination says.

The Ocean Grill came first of the beach restaurants. The nomination says that in 1941 Sexton built the Ocean Grill at 1050 Sexton Plaza, and the State Archives of Florida holds a Department of Commerce slide of the Ocean Grill restaurant at 1050 Sexton Plaza in Vero Beach. A historic photo described in the nomination shows a sign Sexton put up at the corner of Route A1A and Beachland Boulevard advertising luncheon by the sea at the Driftwood Inn; the sign no longer exists.

The Patio was a Sexton building on 21st Street close to downtown Vero Beach, built in the 1930s and first leased as one of the original Howard Johnson ice cream parlors.

According to the National Register nomination, the Patio was later used as a gift shop and fruit stand and as the location of Sexton's real estate office. The same document says Sexton also built the Turf Club on 43rd Avenue in the late 1950s, and that these other Sexton buildings in Vero Beach have been altered, which is why the Driftwood Inn and Restaurant were nominated as the least altered examples of his enterprises.

Local architects singled out the same group of buildings. The nomination says the Indian River Chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave a 1992-1993 Ambiance Award honoring Sexton's Breezeway, Ocean Grill, Patio and Turf Club as making Vero Beach what it is today. The nomination does not describe later owners or uses of the Patio, and this page does not either.

Sexton built without a master plan or blueprints, giving the builders what the National Register nomination calls shouted verbal orders.

The nomination describes Sexton as a world traveler and passionate collector of antiques, cannons, mosaics, paintings, bells, furniture and relief sculpture. He worked hundreds of artifacts into the Driftwood's buildings and grounds, gathered on his travels, from dismantled Palm Beach estates and from flotsam and driftwood washed up on the Vero Beach shore. Part of the timber reportedly came from a barn blown down in a hurricane. Sexton amassed 250 bells from churches, trains, ships and schools, and they were rung to welcome guests on arrival and to bid them farewell.

The result earned federal recognition. The National Park Service lists the Driftwood Inn and Restaurant under National Register Information System ID 94000751, with significant years of 1935 and 1947 and Waldo Sexton named as architect. The nomination notes that published reports described the inn as a hotel of flotsam and jetsam.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, from the Driftwood Inn National Register nomination and its National Park Service record, Florida Historical Marker 635, McKee Botanical Garden's history page, the City of Vero Beach centennial timeline and the Florida Memory Ocean Grill slide record.