Indian River steamboats: the lagoon's highway before Flagler

Before the railroads, the Indian River was the road. The National Park Service’s history of Rockledge dates the turn to 1880, when steamboat service began to nearby Lake Poinsett. A visitor could board a steamboat at Jacksonville, ride up the St. Johns to Sanford, change to a smaller steamer for the terminal at Lake Poinsett, and finish the last five miles to Rockledge on a coach line run by G. S. Hardee, one of the town’s founders.

The wharf at Titusville, 1885

The railroad turned the lagoon into a through route. In 1885 a line from Enterprise, on the St. Johns, reached Titusville, and according to the city’s marker its tracks ran down Broad Street onto a dock about 1,500 feet into the lagoon. The railroad set up the Indian River Steamboat Company to carry its passengers south from the wharf. The Rockledge form describes the effect: passengers and freight could now travel from Jacksonville to Rockledge by train and steamboat, and the new connection “had an immediate impact on the economy of Rockledge and the entire Indian River region.” Titusville, with the only rail connection in the area, had steamer service to Melbourne and other points on the river.

The Queen of the River

The best-recorded boat on the river was the sidewheeler Rockledge. According to the University of Florida’s notes on the 1892 Ingraham expedition, Captain Richard P. Paddison brought her to Florida from North Carolina as the Governor Worth, ran her on the St. Johns between Jacksonville and Sanford, and in 1886 moved her to the Indian River and gave her a new name. She stopped at Titusville and Melbourne and met the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West trains. As the Indian River Steamboat Company’s flagship she was called the “Queen of the River,” and in 1888 she carried President Grover Cleveland and his wife on their tour of the Indian River.

Paddison sold her in 1888 or 1889 to Captain E. E. Vaill, who rebuilt her as “Vaill’s Floating Hotel” and took her south to Jupiter, Lake Worth and Miami. Other boats kept the run going: in April 1892 the Ingraham party came up the river to Titusville on the St. Sebastian, stopping at Rockledge on the way. The full Titusville side of the story is on Old Titusville’s steamboat page.

The railroad takes the trade

Henry Flagler’s railway began service to Titusville in January 1893 and was at Eau Gallie by May. The Park Service’s Titusville form says that after the line became the Florida East Coast Railway in 1895, it “quickly supplanted the steamboat as the principal means of transportation along the Indian River.” The marker on Broad Street says the steamboats kept running into the 1900s but “steadily lost passengers to the railroad.” The railroad story is on our railroad page.

Further Reading

• A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith
• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon