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Fort Lauderdale, Florida

City in Florida, United States

  • 23 min read
  • 12 chapters
The skyline of Downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
KeanoManu · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Built in 1838 and first incorporated in 1911, Fort Lauderdale is named after a series of forts built by the United States during the Second Seminole War. The forts took their name from Major William Lauderdale (1782–1838), younger brother of Lieutenant Colonel James Lauderdale. Development of the city did not begin until 50 years after the forts were abandoned at the end of the conflict. Three forts named "Fort Lauderdale" were constructed, including the first at the fork of the New River, the second at Tarpon Bend on the New River between the present-day Colee Hammock and Rio Vista neighborhoods, and the third near the site of the Bahia Mar Marina.

Known as the "Venice of America", Fort Lauderdale has 165 miles of inland waterways across the city. In addition to tourism, Fort Lauderdale has a diversified economy including marine, manufacturing, finance, insurance, real estate, high technology, avionics/aerospace, film, and television production. The city is a popular tourist destination with an average year-round temperature of 75.5 °F (24.2 °C) and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. Greater Fort Lauderdale, encompassing all of Broward County, hosted more than 13 million overnight visitors in 2018. Nearly four million cruise passengers annually pass through its Port Everglades, making it the world's third-busiest cruise port. With over 50,000 registered yachts and 100 marinas, Fort Lauderdale is also known as the "yachting capital of the world."

History

The area of present-day Fort Lauderdale was inhabited for at least 2,000 years by Indigenous peoples associated with the Tequesta culture. Contact with Spanish explorers in the 16th century contributed to the decline of Native populations in South Florida through the introduction of Eurasian diseases, including smallpox, to which Indigenous communities had little immunity. Disease, warfare, and regional displacement contributed to the decline of the Tequesta and neighboring peoples over the following two centuries. The area was then incorporated within the Spanish Empire during the 16th century.

18th century

By 1763, Native populations in South Florida had been greatly reduced, and surviving groups were reported to have migrated to Cuba when Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain under the Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the Seven Years' War. Florida remained under British control until 1783, when Spain regained Florida with the Treaty of Paris (1783) that followed the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War.

19th century

The area remained sparsely settled until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before the city developed, the area was commonly known as the "New River Settlement". In the 1830s, approximately 70 settlers were living along the New River. William Cooley, the local Justice of the Peace, was a farmer and wrecker, who traded with the Seminole Indians. On January 6, 1836, while Cooley was leading an attempt to salvage a wrecked ship, a band of Seminoles attacked his farm, killing his wife, children, and the children's tutor. The other farms in the settlement were not attacked, but all the white residents in the area abandoned the settlement, fleeing first to the Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne, and then to Key West.

The first United States stockade, named Fort Lauderdale, was built in 1838. It was subsequently a site of fighting during the Second Seminole War. The fort was abandoned in 1842 after the war, and the area remained unsettled by colonists until the 1890s. In 1893, a ferry operated by Frank Stranahan provided transit across the New River. The Florida East Coast Railroad was also completed, providing a route through the area and sparking the city's development.

20th century

In 1911, the city was incorporated. In 1915, it was designated the county seat of the newly formed Broward County.

Fort Lauderdale's first major development began in the 1920s, during the Florida land boom. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 and the Great Depression of the 1930s caused a great deal of economic dislocation. In July 1935, an African-American man named Rubin Stacy was accused of robbing a white woman at knifepoint. He was arrested and being transported to a Miami jail when police were run off the road by a mob. A group of 100 white men proceeded to hang Stacy from a tree near the scene of his alleged robbery. His body was riddled with some 20 bullets. The murder was subsequently used by the press in Nazi Germany to discredit U.S. critiques of its own persecution of Jews, Communists, and Catholics.

When World War II began, Fort Lauderdale became a major U.S. base, with a Naval Air Station to train pilots, radar operators, and fire control operators. A Coast Guard base at Port Everglades was also established.

Until July 1961, only whites were allowed on Fort Lauderdale beaches. There were no beaches for African-Americans in Broward County until 1954, when "the Colored Beach," today Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park, was opened in Dania Beach; however, no road was built to it until 1965. On July 4, 1961, African Americans started a series of wade-ins as protests at beaches that were off-limits to them, to protest "the failure of the county to build a road to the Negro beach." On July 11, 1962, a verdict by Ted Cabot went against the city's policy of racial segregation of public beaches, and Broward County beaches were desegregated in 1962.

Fort Lauderdale is a major center for yachting, one of the nation's largest tourist destinations, and the center of a metropolitan division with 1.8 million people.

Population

After end of World War II, service members returned to the area, spurring an enormous population explosion that dwarfed the 1920s boom. The 1960 census counted 83,648 people in the city, about 230% of the 1950 figure. A 1967 report estimated that the city was approximately 85% developed, and the 1970 population figure was 139,590.

After 1970, growth in the area shifted to suburbs to the west. As cities such as Coral Springs, Miramar, and Pembroke Pines experienced explosive growth, Fort Lauderdale's population stagnated, and the city actually shrank by almost 4,000 people between 1980, when the city had 153,279 people, and 1990, when the population was 149,377. A slight rebound brought the population back up to 152,397 at the 2000 census. Since 2000, Fort Lauderdale has gained slightly over 18,000 residents through annexation of seven neighborhoods in unincorporated Broward County.

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