Boca Life

Boca Raton’s Memorial Park: Is It Actually a ‘Memorial’ To Anything Specific?

by
Daniel Nee
July 22, 2025

Memorial Park, Boca Raton, FL, July 2025. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

Amidst the controversy over Boca Raton’s advancement of a plan to redevelop a 31-acre parcel of land downtown to create a new city government campus along with residential, commercial and recreational development, a more routine question arose: what does Memorial Park, which would see its facilities dispersed to other parts of town as part of the project, actually memorialize?

A few residents at city council meetings said it honored American service members who fought in World War II. Another said it honored all city residents who lost their lives in service to their country. But realistically, no one knew for sure. A plaque near the softball fields honors a youth sports organizer, however that was installed long after the park opened. The pending question led City Manager George Brown, who himself is known for holding a keen interest in the city’s history, to turn to the Boca Raton Historical Society for an answer.

As it turns out, Memorial Park – nestled between NW 2nd Avenue and Crawford Boulevard – is named as such to generally recall past times in the city’s history.

Memorial Park, Boca Raton, FL, July 2025. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

“Memorial Park, as a name, wasn’t linked to any specific historical event, and it wasn’t dedicated to an individual or people who lost their lives in World War II,” said Brown. “It was really named in recognition of the fact that Boca Raton was an Army Air Corps base. The majority of the eastern part of the city was part of that base, and it reflects an era of our history.”

According to the Historical Society, at the beginning of World War II, Boca Raton Mayor J.C. Mitchell convinced officers of the Army Air Corps to move its technical school for radar training from Scott Field, Illinois, to Boca Raton. Radar was a new technology at the time, and Boca Raton’s “high and dry” property, located at a small rudimentary airport just west of the downtown area, seemed to fit with what the Army (the Air Force had not yet been established as its own military branch at the time) was looking for.

Hundreds of structures were built north of Palmetto Park Road to Yamato Road and from Dixie Highway to what is today the CSX (Amtrak) tracks, the Historical Society recorded – some of which still exist as homes, stores, warehouses and other non-descript buildings. Notable wartime figures such as the Tuskegee Airmen, the crew of the Enola Gay, and future astronaut Gus Grissom all served a brief time at Boca Raton learning the ropes of radar operation before serving abroad.

A 1947 hurricane wiped out some of the facilities at the Air Corps base, and between the end of the war and the fact that radar had become a normal commodity in military operations, the base was mostly shut down, reduced to an auxiliary field, and ultimately purchased by the city or transferred to Florida Atlantic University.

Memorial Park, Boca Raton, FL, July 2025. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

Brown said that in the late 1950s, the city began looking at using some of the vacant land and derelict buildings that made up the former air field and its support facilities to create parks, a community center and what eventually became the current location of city hall.

“The radar training base became part of FAU, the city’s utility complex, the Boca Raton airport, residences, and Boca Raton Hills,” said Brown. “Many of the properties along Dixie Highway near 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue were part of the base, and some of the buildings are still there.”

In 1959, the city started developing community park facilities on a portion of the air field property that had previously been used as barracks. A few years later, in 1963, the city broke ground on the 1964 city hall, “And that building is still there, disguised by the building we put up in 1980 when we renovated city hall and the community center,” Brown said.

Memorial Park, Boca Raton, FL, July 2025. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

The park received its name in an effort to recognize the city’s history, but despite that history rising to prominence by way of the current airport and exhibits around town, the generic name of “Memorial Park” lost its connection over generations. Whether the true source of the name of the park bolsters or diminishes the case for or against redeveloping the downtown area as part of the city government campus will remain in the eye of the beholder, but Brown said future development efforts should make an effort to commemorate the city’s past.

“We are committed to honoring our past and planning responsibly for the future, and that planning includes revitalizing the land that is presently the city hall campus,” he said.