How New Port Richey Got Its Name

Port Richey came first, named for the settler Aaron M. Richey. New Port Richey grew upriver as its younger twin. For most places, that would be the whole story. Not here.

New Port Richey incorporated on 24 October 1924. The first act of its new city council, on 2 December that year, was to accept a park donated by George Sims. The park still carries his name. It was a civic gesture, and a smart one: a town that wanted to be somebody needed green space.

The town had bigger ideas than a park. It rode the 1920s Florida land boom hard. The pitch was not just sunshine and water. New Port Richey meant to be a Hollywood colony. For a few years, it nearly was.

The silent-film star Thomas Meighan built a house on the river in 1928 and wintered here. A theatre named for him opened in 1926. The Meighan Theatre gave the town a marquee, literally. The ambition was the charm.

Then the boom collapsed. The movie people drifted. The colony never materialised. What remained was a small town with a grand name and a theatre that remembered better plans. That is not a tragedy. That is just Florida.

Today the census tells a quieter story. Population: 17,057. Median age: 53.5. Total housing units: 9,423, of which 1,367 sit vacant. Only 718 units are held for seasonal or recreational use. The snowbirds did not stay, and the Hollywood crowd never came in force. The town is not a resort. It is a place where people live.

The numbers show a working town, not a fantasy. Median household income is $46,160. Median home value is $164,600. Median gross rent is $1,154. Unemployment sits at 2.8 percent. Just 15.7 percent of residents hold a bachelor's degree or higher. This is not a wealthy enclave. It never became one.

That is the point. The name carries the original idea. New Port Richey was not content to be the second town on the river. It wanted to be new in the sense of fresh, modern, cinematic. The name was a promise. The promise was not kept, but the name stuck.

Walk down to Sims Park. It is the town's first civic gift, accepted nearly a century ago. The donor's name remains. That is the older, steadier tradition: not Hollywood, but a man who gave land so the town would have a place to gather. The park outlasted the boom. It outlasted the colony.

The Meighan Theatre still carries the actor's name, a small monument to the moment when New Port Richey thought it could be a winter capital for the silver screen. Meighan built his river house in 1928, right at the edge of the collapse. He came, he built, and then the economy fell apart. He left a house and a theatre name behind.

There is a wistfulness to that. But the charm is in the attempt. A town that names itself "New" and courts movie stars is a town that believed in tomorrow. It got a different tomorrow than it ordered. The name is still there, and so is the park, and so is the theatre.

New Port Richey did not become Hollywood. It became itself. That is the best any town can do.