Delray Beach, FL (DLB)

Delray Beach traces its origins to the construction of the Orange Grove House of Refuge in 1876, named for a grove of sour oranges and meant to provide refuge to shipwreck survivors.

Amtrak/Tri-Rail Station
345 South Congress Avenue
Delray Beach, FL 33444

Annual Ticket Revenue (FY 2023): $1,091,152
Annual Station Ridership (FY 2023): 13,023

Ownerships
Routes Served
Contact
Local Community Links

Facility Ownership: Florida Department of Transportation
Parking Lot Ownership: Palm Beach County
Platform Ownership: Florida Department of Transportation
Track Ownership: Florida Department of Transportation

Todd Stennis
Regional Contact
governmentaffairsnol@amtrak.com
For information about Amtrak fares and schedules, please visit Amtrak.com or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245).

The current Amtrak stop in Delray Beach consists of a platform with a shelter at the Tri-Rail intermodal station. This facility opened in 1989 as a replacement for the Seaboard Air Line station and was remodeled between 2004 and 2006 to accommodate a second track.

Delray Beach began with the construction of the Orange Grove House of Refuge in 1876, so named for a grove of mature sour oranges that were found at this site. The refuge provided was for shipwreck survivors on that Atlantic-facing beach.

Further settlement began around 1884 when African-Americans from the Florida panhandle bought land inland from the Orange Grove House of Refuge and began farming. By 1894 the community of 250 was large enough to require establishment of the first school in the area. In that year, William Seelye “Steelcut” Linton, postmaster from Saginaw, Michigan, bought a tract of land west of the Orange Grove House of Refuge and began selling plots to create a farming community, which he named after himself. In 1896, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad extended south from West Palm Beach to Miami and created a station stop at Linton.

A hard freeze in 1898 proved a major setback to this small farming community, and many, including Linton, moved away. In 1901 the name was changed to Delray, after a Detroit neighborhood, which in turn was named after the Mexican-American War’s Battle of Molino del Rey. The state of Florida chartered Delray as an incorporated town in 1911, the same year that pineapple and tomato canneries came to the town. Pineapples became the primary crop in the area—thus the naming of the Pineapple Grove neighborhood located today near downtown Delray Beach. However, draining of the Everglades west of Delray Beach in the 1920s brought pineapple cultivation to a close, as the lower water table made it much harder to grow them. The 1920s Florida land boom brought the city further growth.

The town of Delray was separated from the Atlantic Ocean beach by the Florida East Coast Canal, now part of the Intracoastal Waterway. In 1923 the area between the canal and the beach incorporated as Delray Beach; in 1927, Delray and Delray Beach merged into one civic unit, called Delray Beach, which it remains today.

This small city has had a quiet history. Today the downtown has been renovated and shops and businesses brought to the historic town center by the Delray Beach Tennis Center, which has hosted several major international tennis events, such as the 2005 FedEx Cup, the Davis Cup, the Millennium ITC, and the Chris Evert/Bank of America Pro-Celebrity tourney.