about golden harbour

The meaning of the name Boca Raton has always aroused curiosity. Many people wrongly assume the name is simply Rat’s Mouth. The Spanish word boca, or mouth, often describes an inlet, while raton means literally, mouse. The term Boca de Ratones or Boca Ratones, was a navigational referring to a rocky or jagged inlet, but the original location of Boca de Ratones was Biscayne Bay near present day Miami Beach, according to eighteenth century maps. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the term was mistakenly applied to the current Lake Boca Raton, whose inlet was closed throughout most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The “s” and later the “e” were dropped from this title by the 1920s, yet the correct pronunciation remains Rah-tone.

Source – BocaHistory.org. “Our History.” Boca Raton Historical Society, 2021