A Short History of Portmore
By Kennedy Reid (2003) | Edited by Joneil J. Alcock (2011)
PART 2- Housing Developments
By 1915, The Portmore Area (The Salt Pond District) was covered in acres of land used for banana production. Rio Cobre irrigation schemes that had started in the 1870s, made the land profitable for that new fruit export to the USA. At this time, there were scattered settlements of fishers and plantation workers in Newlands, Naggo Head and Old Braeton. The Old Salt Pond property now came to be called "PORTMORE."
On this property the Matalons built the first housing scheme in Portmore. It was called "Independence City." Housing development started in Portmore as a response to the great cry for housing in the 1950s and 1960s in Kingston. A company was formed called the Portmore Land Development Company Limited to develop the housing projects. They constructed eleven (11) miles of Dyke (on which the Dyke Road is built) to contain the Rio Cobre River and then built three (3) miles of Causeway to connect Portmore with Kingston. They filled in low-lands by dredging the harbour and quarrying marl from the Henderson Hills. Once this basic infrastructure was created, developers were then asked to build houses.
In 1969, West Indies Home Contractors (WIHCON) used pre-cast construction to build the first "scheme" in Portmore. Independence City consisted of 1,373, two to three bedroom houses. The next scheme to be built was Edgewater Villas with 689 three bedroom houses.
