With plans afoot for the construction of the present-day Intracoastal Waterway, a marine boulevard for pleasure boating and commercial water traffic, Pompano experienced its first growth spurt. Actual work in the nautical equivalent of U.S. 1 stretching from Jacksonville to Miami began in 1883. Among Pompano's first residents, surveyors Franklyn Sheene and George Butler came to this area upon being hired by the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company to plat the several thousand acres of land that had been deeded to the firm in return for the construction of that part of the Intracoastal Waterway stretching from Jupiter to Biscayne Bay, a channel when dubbed the East Coast Canal which was fifty feet wide and five feet deep when finished in 1890. The nucleus of the original Old Pompano was at Southeast Sixth Street at Lettuce Lake, now called Lake Santa Barbara, so initially named because of the lettuce-like vegetation growing there. Here Sheene and Butler established their homesteads.

(Excerpted from "Pompano in Perspective" by Marlyn Kemper)