NEW SMYRNA BEACH

city, Volusia county, northeastern Florida, U.S. It lies 14 miles (23 km) south of Daytona Beach, on the Atlantic coast, there bisected by the Hillsborough River (lagoon). The site, once occupied by the Indian village of Caparaco and the Spanish mission of Atocuimi (1696), was colonized in 1767 by a mixed immigrant group of Greeks, Minorcans, and Italians led by Andrew Turnbull, a Scottish physician, who named the place New Smyrna for his wife's Turkish birthplace. Because of Revolutionary strife, the colony was abandoned in 1777 but not before sugarcane and indigo were planted and a system of irrigation-and-drainage canals was built. In 1803 settlement was renewed with land grants. Under the stimulus of the Florida East Coast Railway and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, it developed as a processing and distribution point for citrus, farm produce, and seafood (especially shrimp). Tourism, boating, and sport fishing became economic assets, and in 1937, reflecting the white, sandy shore, Beach was added to the city's name. Industrial parks were subsequently established. New Smyrna Sugar Mill Historic Memorial (1830) is immediately west, and Canaveral National Seashore runs southward for 25 miles (40 km). Inc. town, 1887; city, 1903. Pop. (1990) 16,543.