ATLANTIC AVENUE CROSSING

Atlantic Avenue’s crossing of the Florida East Coast Canal (now the Intracoastal Waterway) played an important role in the early history of Delray Beach. Civil engineer Burslem Thomson drew the first plat of “Linton,” now Delray Beach, in late 1895, showing the town’s main street crossing the canal at this location. Atlantic Avenue ran west from the beach between the 1876 Orange Grove House of Refuge and an “old sour orange grove.” The street became the commercial heart of Delray Beach, and included movie theaters, restaurants, shops, hotels, and the city’s first post office. Fishermen brought large catches to a packing house at the crossing, and beach-goers and workers farming land to the east crossed the canal here by lighter barges until 1911, when the City of Delray Beach was incorporated and a hand-cranked swing bridge was constructed. Atlantic Avenue’s fourth and present bridge over the canal was completed in 1952. The gear-driven bridge is a Chicago-style, double-leaf Bascule type bridge with a Hopkins frame. The Atlantic Avenue Bridge was designated a historic bridge by the City of Delray Beach in 2000, and remains an important crossing point for the community.