West Palm Beach: A Historic City Within Miami’s Wider Region

For Miami readers, West Palm Beach can feel like a separate destination—but it is also part of the same broad metropolitan region. The city is located about 68 miles north of downtown Miami and is identified as one of the principal cities of the Miami metropolitan area, which had 6.14 million residents in 2020.

West Palm Beach is the county seat of Palm Beach County and the county’s largest city. Its population was 117,415 at the time of the 2020 census. The city sits directly west of Palm Beach, an adjacent community located on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lagoon. That geography gives the area a distinct relationship between mainland and island communities, connected by the lagoon while remaining separate municipalities.

The city also occupies an important place in South Florida’s history. West Palm Beach is the oldest incorporated municipality in the region. It became a city in November 1894—two years before Miami incorporated. Its early development followed settlement around Lake Worth in the late 1870s and 1880s, when a few hundred people lived in an area known as Lake Worth Country.

Those early settlers came from different parts of the United States and from other countries. Among the families who helped establish the community were the Potters and the Lainharts, who later became prominent in the young city’s business life. The settlement grew around Lake Worth, which at that time was an enclosed freshwater body.

For a Miami-focused audience, West Palm Beach offers a reminder that South Florida’s story extends beyond any single city. Miami is the region’s best-known urban center, but the metropolitan area includes communities with their own histories, civic identities and relationships to the water. West Palm Beach’s early incorporation, county-seat role and position along the Lake Worth Lagoon all helped shape its place in the region.

The city’s proximity also makes it relevant to conversations about South Florida as a connected area rather than a collection of isolated places. Although West Palm Beach is in Palm Beach County and Miami is in Miami-Dade County, both are part of the metropolitan area defined in the research. That shared regional identity provides useful context for understanding how communities north of Miami fit into the larger South Florida landscape.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “West Palm Beach, Florida” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Palm_Beach,_Florida The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table-8-state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_florida_by_city_2012.xls - https://web.archive.org/web/20101229172832/http://www.pba.edu/media/news-releases/athletic-campus.cfm - https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/14/sports/baseball-walker-is-the-first-canadian-mvp.html?ref=topics - https://archive.org/stream/floridagazetteer1907rlpo#page/448/mode/2up - https://archive.org/stream/rlpolkcosflorida02rlpo#page/n167/mode/2up - https://books.google.com/books?id=J5FPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA492 Image rights Photograph description: Minolta Freedom Dual camera and Kodak black and white TX400 film. Creator: Phillip Pessar from Miami, USA. License: CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeaboard_Air_Line_Station_West_Palm_Beach_(9424015103).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.