Today’s Emerald Coast History Article is brought to you by the folks at Okaloosa Gas District.
On April 16, 1938, the man who is arguably the person most responsible for the Emerald Coast as it is today died.
Serial entrepreneur James Plew was one of those people who couldn’t be stopped. He started, of all things, the towel business in Chicago after the death of his parents, before he was 18. He’d expand into manufacturing everything from bicycle seats to selling automobiles at car dealerships. By 1929, his business sense had made him rich. He decided he’d dealt with his last lake-effect snow and Chicago winter. Plew moved south.
The place he found to settle and create was Valparaiso, Florida. Plew would buy much of the land owned by the late John Perrine, who’d had designs to create a resort town in Valparaiso to welcome vacationers from colder climates.
When he arrived, Plew had two strikes against him at the time: he was a Republican and, worse, a Yankee.
Initially, writes future Congressman Bob Sikes in his memoir, didn’t trust him. Sikes, by the way, came to the area to own and operate The Valparaiso Star on the promise of advertising revenue from Plew. Sikes would be the man who made Eglin Air Force Base the economic engine it is today by leveraging his seat on the Congress’s defense construction appropriations committee to pump cash into Eglin for buildings. “My concern now was to protect the economy in my district,” Sikes wrote in his autobiography about the postwar era, “Millions had been spent on military bases there, and they employed many thousands in good-paying jobs. Our Economy had received a spectacular boost during the war years,” he noted.
Eglin, by the way, was named after this pilot in the pre-war Army Air Forces.
But through his strong business acumen and love for aviation, James Plew catalyzed the economy Sikes would expand through defense spending. During the depths of the Great Depression, Plew would buy 1,700 acres that are now part of the city of Valparaiso. He’d deed 1,460 acres to the Army a year before his death, in 1937, to build the Valparaiso Gunnery Range. That parcel of land is now home to the largest Air Force base on Earth, Eglin Air Force Base.
He also set up several businesses in the area, like the Shalimar Winery and the Valparaiso Inn.
Plew died of a heart attack on April 15, 1938. More than 1,000 people showed up to his funeral in Valparaiso – one in every 13 people who lived in Okaloosa County at the time. For a man who’d been mistrusted when he first set foot in Okaloosa County a decade before, he’d engineered quite the change in public opinion through his business sense and sense of generosity. In fact, Plew Elementary, which was constructed 28 years after his death, in 1966, was named in his honor.
His business legacy continues today through two real estate companies, Ruckel Properties and Valparaiso Realty.
Most of the highs in Emerald Coast history owe their existence in some way to Plew. Whether it’s the training of the Doolittle Raiders (done on land he donated), the creation of the McKinley Climactic Laboratory (done on land he donated, and funded by a Congressman he recruited and supported financially through newspaper advertisements) or the expansion of school infrastructure via the increased populations and federal grants that came along with it – James Plew left his mark on the Emerald Coast and the world through his contributions.
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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