In 1890 Thomas Horace Hastings, a cousin of Henry Flagler, founded the settlement of Hastings, built its first house, and constructed greenhouses to raise early winter vegetables for Flagler’s hotels. The post office was established in 1891, and the first school was taught by Mr. Charles Dupont in 1897. Hastings received its town charter in 1909. In the early 1920’s, the development and irrigation of the area’s clay subsoil land began a new era in Florida agriculture, led by pioneers U.J. White, W.H. Erwin, Frank Nix, and John T. Dismukes. Modern machinery, fertilization, and experiment made potato growing a form of scientific farming, and early select potatoes are shipped from here every spring to markets throughout the United States.