If you’re from these parts, it’s likely that on occasion you’ve taken a dreamy walk along the beach, perhaps barefoot, the cool foam coming up on the wet sand. Some of us walk farther than others.
Imagine doing that for 40 miles or so.
Well, if you needed a job back in the 1880s, you could sign up with the U.S. Post Office to be a “beach walkist,” traversing a 68-mile route from Palm Beach to Miami, a stretch with no roads at all. After completing that, it was back up again, all in a week’s work.
The 68 miles did not include continuous beaches, so 28 of those miles involved rowing or sailing across inlets and waterways. Bridges would only appear decades later.
Surviving blistering heat, sudden storms or swarms of mosquitoes could be both exhilarating and frightening.
One of the first to brave this route was none other than Guy Bradley, a legendary South Florida figure who went on to make a career of protecting wildlife, including endangered bird species. That cost him his life when he came into the gun sights of professional poachers, who coveted egrets’ plumage, in demand for female headwear.
A typical trip for Bradley had him sailing south from Palm Beach on Monday morning to the end of the Lake Worth Lagoon. He carried Post Office-issued hard biscuits and coffee in a mailbag slung over his shoulder. Also issued for the passage: a hatchet, a cup, a tin pail and matches.
After landing on the south shore, Bradley would secure the craft and then cross over to the beach, walking on the sand down to what is now Delray Beach. He’d spend the night in the Orange Grove House of Refuge, one of five stations built along the Florida coast in 1876 by the U.S. Life-Saving Service. The houses, made of Florida pine and manned by families under civilian contract, were there to shelter shipwrecked sailors.
On Tuesday, he would trek down the beach to the Fort Lauderdale House of Refuge to spend the night, crossing the Hillsboro Inlet by rowboat.
On Wednesday, he would travel by boat down the New River to its inlet. Boats for each crossing were stored at designated points onshore. After crossing the New River, the carrier would continue to what is now the Haulover Inlet, which feeds into the very north end of Biscayne Bay. From there, the carriers sailed down Biscayne Bay to Miami. On Thursday the return trip would begin, with a Saturday arrival back in Palm Beach.
There is no record of mail being dropped off at the scattered inland settlements along the route; Fort Lauderdale, then the New River Settlement, didn’t get postal service until a post office was established at Frank Stranahan’s trading post in 1893.
This was the life of the Barefoot Mailman. The first known use of the term occurred in 1939 correspondence from former carrier Charles William Pierce, who used the term in communicating with a painter working on murals depicting carrier James Edward Hamilton for the West Palm Beach Post Office.
The tag was amplified with the publication of Theodore Pratt’s novel The Barefoot Mailman in 1943. The book was adapted into a 1951 film starring Robert Cummings.
The mural painted in the West Palm post office should probably be on the walls of a Broward County post office, because that is where the central event in Hamilton’s tale takes place.
In October 1887, Hamilton was headed south on his route when he discovered that the boat for crossing the Hillsboro Inlet was tied up on the other side. Historians, novelists and screenwriters have all speculated about what happened next.
Hamilton’s mailbag and clothing were found on the north shore, but he was never seen again. Did he attempt to swim the inlet to retrieve the boat? Did he drown? Was he carried out to sea by the current? Was he attacked by a shark or a gator?
The Theodore Pratt novel does not tell this story. The 1951 film seems to branch even further afield with Bob Cummings playing a swindler who is given a deed to a large plot of mangrove swamp. But the novel does portray the life (and romance) of those postal carriers in a fictional carrier, Steven Pierton. According to one review, it “gives you a glimpse into a simpler time in Florida, when settlers sat down to meals of alligator tail, venison, shredded palmetto bud and sour orange pies.”
The Barefoot Mailman route continued until 1892 when a rock road was completed from Lantana to Lemon City.
Enjoy your walks on the beach.
