The Indian River steamboats at Rockledge, 1880s to 1893

Until 1893 there was no railroad to Rockledge, and nearly everyone who came arrived by boat. In the early 1880s that meant the St. Johns River: the National Park Service’s history of the town says steamboat service to Lake Poinsett began in 1880, and from the landing Gardner Hardee’s coach line carried visitors the last five miles. After the railroad reached Titusville in 1885, the route shifted to the Indian River itself, by train to the Titusville wharf and then south by steamer. Both routes ended when Flagler’s railway came through Rockledge in 1893.

Two ways in

The St. Johns route came first. Visitors boarded a steamboat at Jacksonville, went up the river to Sanford, and changed to a smaller steamer for Lake Poinsett, the upper St. Johns lake west of Rockledge. Hardee’s coach did the rest. The Park Service credits the start of that steamboat service, in 1880, with much of Rockledge’s development as a resort.

The Indian River route took over in 1885. That year the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West line from Enterprise reached Titusville, where, according to the City of Titusville’s marker, the tracks ran out onto a dock about 1,500 feet into the lagoon to meet the steamboats. The railroad set up the Indian River Steamboat Company to carry its passengers south. The Park Service’s Rockledge history says the new connection “had an immediate impact” on the town, bringing tourists and settlers faster and getting Indian River produce to northern markets.

The steamer Rockledge

The best-documented boat on the run carried the town’s name. The University of Florida’s notes on the 1892 Ingraham expedition give its history. Captain Richard P. Paddison brought the sidewheeler Governor Worth to Florida from North Carolina and ran her on the St. Johns between Jacksonville and Sanford. In 1886 he moved her to the Indian River and renamed her the Rockledge. She stopped at Titusville and Melbourne, met the Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West trains, and as the flagship of the Indian River Steamboat Company was known as the “Queen of the River.”

In 1888 the Rockledge carried President Grover Cleveland and his wife on their tour of the Indian River country. In 1888 or 1889 Paddison sold her to Captain E.E. Vaill, who remodeled her and ran her as “Vaill’s Floating Hotel” at Jupiter, Lake Worth and Miami.

Other boats kept the route going. In April 1892, when Ingraham’s party came up the Indian River to Titusville aboard the steamer St. Sebastian, it stopped briefly at Rockledge, long enough to note that the Hotel Indian River had closed a few days before.

The end of the river route

The railroad that ended Rockledge’s dependence on the boats arrived in the first months of 1893. Flagler’s line began service to Titusville in January 1893 and reached Eau Gallie, south of Rockledge, on May 20. The Titusville marker describes what followed on the river: Flagler’s railway “soon pushed southward, ending Titusville’s short-lived monopoly,” and while steamboats “continued to ply these waters into the 1900s,” they “steadily lost passengers to the railroad.”

The railroad’s arrival at Rockledge has its own page. For the steamboats along the whole lagoon, see the Old Space Coast account.

Further Reading

• Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron by Edward N. Akin
• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon