Who Slept at Seminole Inn?

 

      On a recent trip to Indiantown, I drove past a building I remember passing several times over the years.  As my Dad usually wouldn't stop unless it was a dire personal emergency requiring a restroom, I was never able to get more than a glimpse of the hotel as we rolled past on our way to the west coast.

      This time, I stopped for a couple of pictures and a closer look. (It's so nice being the driver instead of the passenger sometimes.) 

     The Seminole Inn is one of the hotels built back in those glorious days of the Florida real estate boom of the early 1920s. I've wanted to stay the night there since I was a child, but it always seemed to be on the way to another destination. But one of these days, I'm going to make it my destination. I'm adding it to my Florida Bucket List.

     It was 1926 when the Inn was built on the side of Beeline Highway at Warfield Boulevard in Indiantown, Florida.  The brainchild of S. Davies Warfield, President of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in the 1920's, it was intended as a luxurious stop for railway visitors as they made their way through Florida. Warfield had big plans for little Indiantown and since Warfield had the say-so, he said the railway would make a stop at Indiantown, and so it did.

     Warfield was actually the uncle of Wallis Warfield Simpson. You may have heard of her. A king of England abdicated his throne rather than give up Wallis. Rumor had it that Wallis and her princely husband, the former King Edward VIII, honeymooned at the hotel, but Palm Beach Post columnist Eliot Kleinberg tracked down the truth. The couple honeymooned in Australia.

     S. Davies Warfield died in 1927 shortly before the hurricane of 1928 wreaked havoc on the railway line and the stock market crash of 1929 took the wind out of the tourism industry in Florida for a while. The railroad continued to stop in Indiantown until 1971 and the depo was demolished sometime later. 

    Personally, it's ok with me if royalty didn't trod the wood floors and gaze upon the pecky cypress ceilings at the Inn. I'd still like to stay there and let my imagination run wild. Anyone up for a road trip?

    The Seminole Inn is located at 1585 S.W. Warfield Boulevard, Indiantown, Florida 34956. That's in Martin County. Telephone: 772-597-2777 and e-mail is seminolein@aol.com.