Indiantown History and My Exhibit

Indiantown was originally established by the Seminole people as a trading post. It was then settled by white American migrants in the 1890s. In 1924, Indiantown was transformed when S. Davies Warfield built an extension of the Seaboard Air Line Railway from Coleman, Florida to West Palm Beach, passing directly through, and stopping in Indiantown.[ Warfield planned to make Indiantown the southern hub of the Seaboard rail line. Toward that end, he planned a model city, laying out streets and building a school, housing, and a railroad station. Warfield also built the Seminole Inn, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.[ But the Florida land boom of the 1920s fizzled out after 1926. Warfield died a year later, putting an end to plans make Indiantown the Seaboard's southern headquarters. The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane wreaked significant destruction and halted further development. Seaboard trains continued to stop at the Indiantown depot through the 1960s but passenger service to the station was eliminated when Amtrak took over in 1971. The depot was demolished several years later. The Seminole Inn is virtually all that remains of the 1920s boom.[ Warfield's contributions to Indiantown are memorialized in, among others, Warfield Boulevard (the main route through Indiantown) and Warfield Elementary School.[ Kevin Boldenow, a fine art photographer in Palm City, Florida, has been creating a pictorial history of Indiantown. With the help of Women Supporting the Arts of Martin County providing grant support, and the Martin County Library System, Kevin will exhibit some of his photos beginning May 17th through June 28th , 2014, at the Elizabeth Lahti Library in Indiantown. After the first phase of the exhibit, Kevin hopes to showcase his project at local businesses in Indiantown. A calendar will be developed for 2015 with twelve images of Historic Indiantown, as the exhibit returns to the Elizabeth Lahti Library in October and November. Proceeds of the sale of images and calendars will go to the Elizabeth Lahti Library. To view more of Kevin’s art, please visit his website at www.krbphotoimagery.com