West Palm Beach, Fl (© Paul Nicklen/Corbis) The town of West Palm Beach wasn't established until the late 1800s, nearly 400 years after Spanish explorers first landed in Fl. The massive swamps and wetlands on the western edges of the city shaped West Palm Beach's expansion. Urban growth stretched north and south, leaving the east-west corridor just a few blocks wide. It wasn't until the 1960s that the community expanded west, when new technology allowed developers to drain much of the swampland.