Lantana, Florida: Named for a Weed

The small coastal town of Lantana, just south of Lake Worth, takes its name from the lantana plant, a flowering shrub that grew so abundantly along the Lake Worth Lagoon shore that early settlers had no better word for the place. The town was incorporated in nineteen twenty-one, though settlers had been arriving since the eighteen eighties. Lantana grew as a modest fishing and farming community while the grander developments of Palm Beach to the north attracted national attention.

For most of the twentieth century it remained quietly working-class by Palm Beach County standards, a place where fishermen and service workers lived while catering to the resort economy a few miles north. The lagoon the original settlers found still borders the town.