route running from Hypoluxo to Miami for the rest of its existence. This route was called the "barefoot route" because the carriers walked barefoot on the beach. The mail carriers, and others who had learned the method of walking long distances on a sloping beach without tiring, were called "beach walkists" or "beach walkers". The barefoot route continued until 1892 when a rock road was completed from Lantana to Lemon City, and the mail contract from the Lake Worth area was taken over by Guy Metcalf. The first known use of "barefoot mailman" was in 1939, when Charles William Pierce, who had been one of the carriers on the barefoot route, used the term in correspondence with Stevan Dohanos, who was painting murals of James Edward Hamilton, another carrier, for the West Palm Beach post office. The term first appeared in print in The Palm Beach Post in 1940. Another source states that (in 1869) the mail is carried along the coast from St. Augustine to Jupiter Inlet in boats, from there to Miami by foot, and then to Key West by schooner. Barefoot mailmen The first barefoot mailman was Edwin Ruthven Bradley, a retired Chicago newsman and Lake Worth resident, who won the postal contract in 1885 with a bid of $600 per year. He and his son, Louie, took turns carrying the mail once a week for about two years. His second son, Guy Bradley, would later become famous after his murder while serving as an early game warden protecting the egrets being poached for tail feathers. The third, and most famous, of the barefoot mailmen was James E. "Ed" Hamilton, who had come to Hypoluxo from Cadiz, Kentucky (Trigg County) in 1885. Hamilton became the barefoot route contractor when E. R. Bradley quit in 1887. Hamilton disappeared while walking the barefoot route soon after October 10, 1887. Hamilton was not feeling well when he passed through Hypoluxo on October 10. When Hamilton had not returned to Lake Worth at the end of the week, a search was started. Hamilton's possessions, including all of his clothes, were found on the north bank of the Hillsboro Inlet. He had never arrived at the Fort Lauderdale House of Refuge, south of the inlet. The boat that Hamilton used to cross the inlet was missing. He was presumed to have drowned or been taken by a shark or alligator while trying