This is the real life tale of Florida’s legendary Barefoot Mailman.

The time was the 1880s, when Miami was a little more than a mangrove swamp, still a wild country with Florida cougars and black bears roaming freely along the beaches and inlets infested with alligators.

Dangerous beachcombers threatened respectable folk and whole communities would live off goods stolen from storm wrecked ships thrown up by the waves.

South Florida was attracting a steady stream of pioneers and settlers, but there was still no direct mail service between Palm Beach and Miami.

Have you ever trudged a mile of beach sand?   How about under a blazing hot Florida sun, while carrying a haversack stuffed to the hilt with mail swung over your shoulder? 

Shirt off, shoes off, sometimes trousers too (who would know),  of course their supplies were stuffed into the haversack and fortunately the United States Postal Service made a major concession by letting them carry a canvas mail sack instead of the regulation heavier sack made out of cowhide.

They mostly walked along the beach since there was no road connecting the 68 mile trek.  They also completed about 28 miles of the route by boat.

The route was originally called the “Barefoot Route” and the mail carriers called “Beach Walkers”.

Several men who walked the Barefoot Route made the 136 mile round trip from Palm Beach to Miami and back in 6 days. 

The first contracted Barefoot Mailman was Edward Bradley,  a Chicago newsman who won the contract for the route in 1885 for $600.

The second mailman was his son Louie, with whom he shared the route for two years.

The third mailman though not the last is the most famous,  James “Ed” Hamilton from Kentucky, who took over the route in 1887.

Hamilton was walking the route on October 10th 1887, when he reported not feeling well while passing through Hypoluxo. 

Usually a small boat would be hidden in the bushes on the Northern side of the inlet,  but someone had already taken it across.

Hamilton hung his mail sack and clothes in a tree, jumped in the water and was never heard from again.

When he failed to return to Lake Worth at the end of the week, a search party was started for the missing mailman.

On the North Bank of the Hillsboro Inlet, Hamilton’s clothes and mail were discovered.   He had never arrived at the Fort Lauderdale House of Refuge on the south side and his boat was missing.

It is theorized that he drowned in the strong currents, but it’s more likely he met a more grisly fate since his body was never recovered.

The Hillsboro Inlet was inhabited by hundreds of alligators, but since it empties into the Atlantic Ocean,  it could have easily been sharks. 

The need for the Barefoot mailman ended in January 1893 with the building of a rock road from Lantana, 8 miles south of Palm Beach to Lemon City,  6 miles north of Miami in Lantana.

This signaled the end of the pioneer era in South Florida and the beginning of the Henry Flagler era with his railroad.

There have been several books, including a 1951 movie “The Barefoot Mailman”, starring Robert Cummings, that was shot in Naples, Florida.

In 1973 they erected a bronze statue honoring the eleven Barefoot Mailman and it’s dedicated to Ed Hamilton, that disappeared in 1887.

The mailman, is depicted as vigorous and virile and barefoot of course, with the jaunty cap and a big machete,  his mail sack hung over one’s shoulder.

It’s located at the base of the lighthouse in Hillsboro Beach.