Home About the DistrictFlorida's 19th

The 19th District of Florida

Florida’s 19th Congressional District spans much of southeastern Palm Beach County and northeastern Broward County, reaching as far north as the edge of West Palm Beach and as far south as Pompano Beach and Tamarac.  The communities in our district include Atlantis, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Coconut Creek, Coral Springs, Deerfield Beach, Delray Beach, Greenacres, Lake Worth, Lantana, Margate, Palm Springs, Pompano Beach, and Tamarac.

The history of Boca Raton, the largest population center in the 19th District, dates back to the beginning of the 20th Century with the building of Addison Mizner’s Boca Raton Hotel, still visible from miles away as the towering pink hotel on the Intracoastal Waterway.  Japanese farmers of the Yamato Colony converted land west of the city into pineapple plantations beginning in 1904.  This land was later used as the site of the Boca Raton Army Air Force Base, a major training facility for B-29 bomber crews during World War II.  Much of this airbase was later donated to become the home of Florida Atlantic University, a top research institution in areas ranging from biomedicine and biotechnology to ocean engineering and coastline security.  Boca Raton was also the southern home of the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) from the early 1960s through the 1980s, and their main complex in Boca Raton was the birthplace of the IBM PC.  Today, Boca Raton is well known for its exclusive shopping areas, including Town Center at Boca Raton and Mizner Park, and the Mediterranean and Spanish architectural themes of many of its buildings and homes.

Delray Beach, to the north of Boca Raton, is the home of the Delray Beach Tennis Center, which hosts several international tennis events, and several historic landmarks from the early history of South Florida, including Old School Square and the Colony Hotel.  Boynton Beach, originally settled by Civil War Major Nathan S. Boynton, became a mecca for the earliest round of winter tourists to Florida in the late 1890s and today is one of the fastest growing communities in Palm Beach County.  North of Boynton Beach, Lake Worth and its surrounding communities (Atlantis, Greenacres, and Lantana) developed with the extension of Henry Flagler’s rail line into South Florida in 1896 and today are home to a diverse range of cultures and nationalities.   

In Broward County, the history of the City of Deerfield Beach dates back to the late 19th century, where early settlers built homes near the Hillsboro River and began establishing an agricultural community, which later developed into a burgeoning tourist town.  Pompano Beach, which is currently celebrating its centennial year, was one of the first cities in the region to experience large population growth with the land boom of the 1920s, and today is home to one of the most substantial seasonal populations in the area. South and west of Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach, the communities of Coral Springs, Coconut Creek, Margate and Tamarac were all built with the beginning of South Florida’s major population growth in the 1960s, and today support a burgeoning middle-class and prosperous senior communities.