Ponte Vedra Beach, in St. Johns County south of Jacksonville, remained sparsely settled through the late 19th century. In 1914 minerals were found in the beach sands, mostly titanium ore (ilmenite), zircon and rutile, and a community called Mineral City grew around the Buckman and Pritchard Mining Company's operations.
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The National Lead Company bought Buckman and Pritchard in 1921 and stopped mining when demand fell after World War I. In 1929 it began developing the area as a resort modeled on The Cloister at Sea Island, Georgia, and Colonel Joseph C. Stehlin arrived from St. Louis on January 1, 1929, to manage it.
Wanting a grander name than Mineral City, Stehlin and his wife, Elizabeth, searched old maps in the St. Augustine library and found Pontevedra on Spain's Atlantic coast, at what they thought was about the same latitude, though the Spanish town is more than 800 miles farther north. Its name comes from a Roman "old bridge" over the Lérez River. The National Lead board approved, and Mineral City became Ponte Vedra.
Sources
Wikipedia: Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida