How did Bradenton get its Friendly City nickname? A local legend may hold the answer
While Bradenton’s city name is over a century old, the city’s popular nickname has been around nearly as long.
Later this year, Bradenton’s “Friendly City” moniker turns 100.
On December 1, 1924, the city’s nickname was adopted, according to historical records.
The city, though, went by the name Bradentown at the time. According to historical records, E.C. Barnes, a local business owner, wanted the city name changed to Bradenton.
“Bradentown will always be a small town until we take the ‘w’ out,” Barnes said in a speech to the Manatee River Kiwanis Club, according to a 2014 Bradenton Herald article.
By 1924, Florida’s state legislature granted a petition to change the city’s name along with the Friendly City motto.
Why the Friendly City?
Bradenton’s population increased two decades before the 1924 name change and nickname adoption. And after the Friendly City nickname was granted, even more people lived in Bradenton, according to U.S. Census data.
Census data says Bradenton had 3,868 residents in 1920, a 105.1% increase compared to 1910. By 1950, the population swelled to 13,604.
The reason?
Local legend says Robert M. Beall Sr., founder of department store Bealls, was a councilman and recruited two men to drive the Dixie Highway north into Georgia and plant wooden signs every 10 miles that said, “Bradenton, the Friendly City.”
“So people all of a sudden started coming here, because that’s how the tourism started,” Bradenton Mayor Gene Brown said. “... If you traveled five or 10 miles, you saw, ‘Bradenton, the Friendly City.’ So you thought well, maybe I’ll go visit there. And that’s when the trailer park started, the Kiwanis started the trailer park and everything. All of that is what kind of got the Friendly City started.”
What about that other name?
The Friendly City is Bradenton’s official nickname, but there’s another one that carries a derisive and derogatory tone behind it: Bradentucky.
Projects such as the Riverwalk and renovations at LECOM Park led to David Gustafson, the city’s former executive director of Downtown Development Authority, to tell a crowd in 2014, “that’s what’s making Bradenton no longer Bradentucky.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2024 at 5:50 AM.
