Photo Courtesy of Boca Raton Historical Society
While the names Flagler and Mizner often are associated with Boca Raton, it was Thomas Moore Rickards who is considered the city’s founding father. Rickards first came to the area in 1892 and purchased land near the Hillsboro Inlet.
A civil engineer, surveyor and farmer, Rickards was hired by railroad magnate Henry Flagler to survey Boca Raton for the extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. At the same time, he was exploring the viability of agriculture in the area.
He created the first real map of Boca Raton in 1896. The land was divided into 10-acre tracts and sold to Northerners.
He came to love the area so much that he decided to move his family to the east side of the Intracoastal Waterway, south of what is today the Palmetto Park Bridge. His home was made of beachfront wreckage. He named the property Black Cat Plantation after the Florida panthers he would see walking across it at night.
A farmer at heart, Rickards took about 500 acres of land and turned it into a pineapple plantation. He also grew citrus trees on 55 nearby acres. Like many South Floridians, Rickards and his wife eventually grew tired of the heat and hurricanes, and in 1905, after a hurricane destroyed his crops, they moved to North Carolina.