The Spanish River is a former fresh-water stream which once flowed through Boca Raton, Florida. It was originally known, erroneously, as "Boca Raton's Lagoon" or "Lake Boca Ratones" (a name first used in 1823)[1] —Boca Raton apparently having been originally appended to an inlet near Biscayne Bay—but settlers renamed it the "Old Spanish River"; the latter dates to 1895 or later, when the stream was canalized and turned into the Intracoastal Waterway.
Before then, the stream, which ran latitudinally between Lake Boca Raton and Lake Worth, consisted of sawgrass marsh. Below Lake Worth its first 6miles were nearly impassable, but the stream widened beyond Orange Grove Haulover. The stream ran past the Boca Raton Hammock through present-day Lake Wyman and Lake Rogers, emptying into Lake Boca Raton.
During the Florida land boom of the 1920s, the draining of the Everglades opened the Hillsboro Canal; this, along the dredging of Boca Raton Inlet, led to saltwater intrusion, and consequently mangroves supplanted freshwater vegetation in the "river". Urbanization also reduced surface runoff. By the 1940s mangrove swamps had replaced the onetime sawgrass marsh.[2]
People joke that "no one in town can find it" but in fact the stream bed is still visible in Spanish River Park, on the barrier island alongside State Road A1A;[3] relics of the stream were also once detectable near its headwaters, west of Jap Rock (now Highland Beach).[4] There are several other establishments in the area that bear the name of the once-flowing stream, including a high school, a church, a library, and a road.