South Florida desolate in 1905 but more planned with chance to accumulate a fortune

Florida agricultural map 1905
State Archives of Florida

 

By Jane Feehan

South Florida looks desolate relative to the northern areas of the state in this 1905 agricultural map. Headlines and key news stories a decade or so later point to big plans and expectations. Change was in the air. Snapshots of topics below underscore anticipation of what was to come.

Miami has a future that cannot ... be penetrated. Her climate, geographical and farming capacity are yet to be fully developed but she bears that same position to trade centers as does Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans and New York City.  Editorial from Miami Metropolis April 24, 1905

Official “booster of the northwest,” E.M. Elliott of Seattle, Washington is known for his apple-centric displays at “land shows” in New York, Chicago, Omaha, and Pittsburg to encourage people to move to his state. But in March 1913, he takes up permanent residence in Miami where there is “a chance to accumulate great fortune.” The climate is good (he has not yet been here for a summer), as is the outlook for economic growth, he tells reporters. He has his eyes on the soon-to-open Panama Canal and the commerce it will generate for Miami. Note: Endorsements such as Mr. Elliott's were published at least once a week in Miami papers.

Miami’s city council approves funds for the mayor to advertise for bids from companies to operate street cars in 1913. The council states “the opportunity for such investment is unequaled in any other place twice its [Miami’s] size."

Miami grabs national headlines in 1913 as the warmest city in the nation on January 6 with a high of 78 degrees and a low of 74. Miami farmers hope this will increase demand for their fruits and vegetables. Havre, Montana garners mention with  the lowest temperature that day of 36 below zero.

Funds are approved by Fort Lauderdale for a survey to “secure deep water in the inlet of the New River.” This is to be followed by estimates to dredge a channel and basin. The work will facilitate the state’s drainage project for the Everglades via a canal, but Fort Lauderdale, “the Gate City” (to the Everglades), also wants to open the mouth of the river to “traffic of the world.” And thus, Port Everglades is conceptualized; it will prove to be a far more successful venture than draining the Everglades. Today, this port ranks second in the state in tonnage just behind PortMiami.

  

Discussions abound in Miami and Fort Lauderdale about creating a county north of Dade County to include Fort Lauderdale, Dania and other nearby towns. The new county will be named Broward and it may take towns in Dade and perhaps, Palm Beach County. Dade County is not happy about a bigger county to its north. In 1913, Dania backs out and the proposal is tabled – for awhile. Broward County was established April 30, 1915 … and Dania was back in.  

World-renowned engineer Isham Randolph, chair of the Everglades Commission (the drainage project), advises the city of Miami to buy up property along the waterfront owned by John N. Lummus (first mayor of Miami Beach 1915-1918) to develop into dockage and a harbor. He, as well as others, anticipate marine traffic coming from the soon-to-open-Panama Canal (opened August 14, 1914). He was right.

In 1913 SOFLA one can buy a five-room house near the center of Miami for $1,800 ...“Half cash only required.”  What's to stop anyone from moving here? 

Now many ask how to keep people away ... and we keep growing.

Sources:

The Daily Miami Metropolis, April 24, 1905

Miami News, Jan. 6, 1913

Miami News, March 1, 1913

Miami News, May 2, 1913

Miami Metropolis, May 13, 1913

Miami Metropolis, Aug. 4, 1913

Tags: Florida development, Miami in the 1900s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1900s.

Fort Lauderdale: from plow and trowel to beach towel

Fort Lauderdale Beach

 

By Jane Feehan

Settlers first came to Fort Lauderdale with farming in mind. It was the Everglades they set their hopes on; its rich dark muck was a farmer’s dream—if the Everglades could be drained.

To promote interest in developing farmlands in 1911-1912, city pioneers and Board of Trade delegates traveled to nearby cities by train with a large banner advertising Fort Lauderdale as Gateway to the Everglades. The message: “Our little town is the gateway that leads not only to the Everglades but to success.”

A variety of promotions were used to entice settlers into farm life. In 1911, The Everglades Land Sales Company advertised a "celebration" or exhibition to show off a swamp plow, the Buckeye Traction Pulverizer. A successful tool in Louisiana, it was sure to be in Florida. It could plow 10 acres a day at $3 per acre unlike the “old way” at $6 per acre. Prospective land–and plow—buyers were directed to Fort Lauderdale where they could take a boat to the South Canal and to the company’s experimental farm. It was expected to “attract a large number of people.” (No follow up on this claim.)

In 1922, even though hopes waned about draining the Everglades, the Carmichael Development Company touted Fort Lauderdale as the “Key City to the East Coast of Tomorrow.” The community it was promoting, Placidena, did not sit in the Everglades but in town (today a city subdivision).

Everglades postcard 1935
Florida State Archives

Advertisements shifted away from Everglades by the mid-1920s. Draining exploits failed; Mother Nature prevailed. Messaging was different.

Seaboard Holding Company ads elevated new reasons for moving to Fort Lauderdale while lowering prominence of the Everglades:

• It is on the ocean
• It is on Dixie Highway
• It is below the frostline
• It is at the Everglades
• It is 26 miles north of Miami
• It is 41 miles south of Palm Beach
• The FEC (Florida East Coast Railway)
• The Seaboard Air Line Railway is coming through (airline here refers to shortest rail route)
• The New River is 90 feet deep, right in the city
• It has churches, schools, banks, hotels, golf courses, fishing, bathing, boating and a wonderful climate all year round.

Today, most are moving here for many of the reasons above but even more important, to get away from other states. Many will be unhappy residents during summers when weather is not wonderful but might feel at home with the congested roads and burgeoning high rises.

Fort Lauderdale 2021

For more on draining the Everglades see: 

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2021/01/napoleon-bonaparte-broward-and.html

-----

Sources:

Miami Daily Metropolis, Jan. 23, 1911

Miami Daily Metropolis, July 19, 1911

Miami Herald, Dec. 30, 1922

Miami Herald, April 7, 1926

Tags: Gateway to the Everglades, Fort Lauderdale development, Everglades farming, Fort Lauderdale land sales, Fort Lauderdale history

Osceola Hotel, Fort Lauderdale's early frontier hotel

Osceola Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, circa 1910
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Some say the Osceola Hotel was Fort Lauderdale’s first, but Frank Stranahan’s trading post hosted visitors before 1900.

Visitors to Fort Lauderdale at this time were mostly in town for work or business, such as land sales or trade rather than sight seeing. There wasn't much to see, beaches were not easily accessed until 1917. Hopes were high for developing the Everglades into farms before attention turned east.

Early visitors stayed at the Osceola Hotel, also referred to as the Osceola Inn.

The large wooden structure started out in 1904 as a packing house for the Osceola Fruit and Vegetable Company at Wall Street and Brickell Avenue (later site of Brown’s Restaurant, a popular hangout of local politicians for decades).

The packing company failed and M.A. and William Marshall, Fort Lauderdale's first mayor, purchased the property in 1906. It’s not clear who converted it into a hotel but several claimed they did, including builder-developer Henry R. Brown of North Carolina or Tennessee (his home reference depends on news accounts). Don Farnsworth, a local resident and businessman, also claimed he did. The Fort Lauderdale Land and Development Company probably was in the ownership mix after the packing company closed.

What is certain is the Osceola was a place local families, including that of early Fort Lauderdale artist J. Melvin Ziegler, entertained themselves by watching visitors come and go. Also confirmed, the Osceola Hotel escaped Fort Lauderdale’s first major fire June 1, 1912. Most of the businesses burned to the ground in the city’s only downtown district before help could arrive. It was reported the hotel was saved by dynamiting intervening buildings. 

The Osceola Hotel was not so lucky a year later. It was destroyed in fire “all by itself,” July 17, 1913.

For more on the 1912 fire, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/12/fort-lauderdale-burns-fire-that-brought.html

Another early hotel:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2019/01/las-olas-inn-long-gone-and-mostly.html

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, July 22, 1938

Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 19, 1938

Fort Lauderdale News, April 22, 1940

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov 27, 1951

Fort Lauderdale News, July 17, 1953

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 2, 1955

Weidling, Philip J., Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966)

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, History of Fort Lauderdale

Rough start for Fort Lauderdale's first doctor

 

Thomas Simpson Kennedy (1859-1939), a North Carolinian, made his way to Florida after service with the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War.

“During my army experience … Florida was more talked about as a pioneer state for young men to go to than the old phrase ‘go west young man, go west,’ ” wrote Kennedy in his memoirs.

With army experience, two years of schooling in pharmacy and high hopes, he traveled south from Georgia by boat, rail and foot. After stopping in Titusville, then Jensen where pineapples were grown commercially, and Stuart, Kennedy couldn’t find work. The hard freezes of 1894 and 1895 had dealt farming an icy blow. His friend, John Mulligan, had purchased land south of Fort Lauderdale to grow citrus. He persuaded Kennedy to move to the outpost to try his hand at farming. Kennedy arrived in October 1899.

He began his life near the New River growing tomatoes (near current day Southwest 9th Street) but a yellow fever epidemic soon broke out, affecting all in the area, including Kennedy. He tended to patients – and his tomatoes – until the fever ran its course through “every man, woman and child … black and white.”

In 1900, before the epidemic ended, two doctors from the Federal Bureau of Health visited Kennedy to investigate his practicing medicine without a license. The tomato farmer told them there were no doctors there during the epidemic and that none had been allowed into the area, which was under quarantine. Satisfied after examining his patients, the federal agents arranged to pay Kennedy for his services. That money, plus proceeds from his farming efforts, provided the would-be doctor funds to complete his medical degree. He graduated from Sewanee Medical College in Tennessee January 1902.

With degree in hand, Kennedy resolved to “practice medicine full blast without a horse, without anything but my feet to walk on.” And that he did, from Miami to Stuart. If people couldn’t pick him up with horse and buggy, he’d take a train to visit patients. One steamy hot July day he took a train from Fort Lauderdale to Deerfield to tend to a family with typhoid. When finished, he began walking the 15 miles back to Fort Lauderdale and collapsed. A man with a hand car (small railroad car) came to his rescue. From that time on, if travelers were found ill, Dr. Kennedy was summoned. He eventually traveled with his own horse and buggy.

Successful tomato farmer and popular country doctor, Thomas S. Kennedy is counted among Fort Lauderdale’s colorful – and vital – early pioneers. 

Copyright© 2010. Jane Feehan. All rights reserved. 

Sources:

Broward Legacy, Vol. 6, No. 1-4. Thomas S. Kennedy: an autobiography of a country doctor.

http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/DLData/SN/SN01480340/0006_001/file71.pdf

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 28, 1979

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, First doctor in Fort Lauderdale, 

Fort Lauderdale burns ... the fire that brought change

 

Osceola Hotel burns down 1913, next to
 and a year after big fire of 1912
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan

On June 1, 1912, about a year after Fort Lauderdale incorporated as a city, fire destroyed nearly every building in its business district. At that time, the business district, not far from New River, comprised most of the small city.

Fort Lauderdale had no fire department. A bucket brigade mobilized to douse the fire without much luck. Fire departments from Miami and Palm Beach were dispatched to help but they arrived too late.

Lost in the blaze were the Stranahan, and Wheeler general stores, pharmacy, post office, meat market, grocery store, jewelry store, real estate office and the Fort Lauderdale Herald, the city's first newspaper. Only the Osceola Inn remained on Brickell Avenue (it burned to the ground the following year).

Within a few days, the city organized its first volunteer fire department, ordered a gas-operated pumper, and 1,500 feet of fire hose.  Fort Lauderdale City Attorney J.L. Billingsley, also a victim of the fire, told reporters that “Fort Lauderdale has the gamest little band of citizens that ever put a shoulder to the wheel, and they will pull together in rebuilding the town.”

Fort Lauderdale did recover with a little help from growing interest in the area.  Just beyond the horizon lay significant business expansion and population growth, which eased the financial burden of rebuilding.

______

Sources:

Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966)

Miami News, June 4, 1912


Tags: History of Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale fire, Fort Lauderdale's first volunteer fire department, Fort Lauderdale history

A tradition begins: Fort Lauderdale's first party boat and its famous visitors

 

First Belonged to Charles Cory
 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

It could be said that Fort Lauderdale’s first houseboat, the Wanderer, launched the city’s reputation as a party place, especially among boaters.

The vessel (above in 1917) a refurbished Mississippi River packet boat with 12 bedrooms, several recreation rooms and a piano, was brought to the Stranahan New River Camp and Trading Post in 1896 by wealthy ornithologist, Charles B. Cory* (1857-1921).  Four years later, he purchased land near SW 15^th Street, dredged a canal for the Wanderer and continued to host the Stranahans and their camp visitors. Among guests were former President Grover Cleveland and actor Joe Jefferson.

Partying went on for days at a time. The tradition continued when Cory transferred ownership after he lost his fortune in 1906. Title to the Wanderer was transferred to a succession of owners, including Jefferson, until it was destroyed by the hurricane of 1926.

*Cory wrote Birds of Haiti, Birds of the Bahamas, Birds of the West Indies – and many more. He was also a golfer, competing in the 1904 Olympics. After he lost his fortune, he took a salaried position as curator of zoology for the Field Museum in Chicago where he remained for the rest of his life.

_______

Sources:

  1.Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale, Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

  2. Miami News, Jan. 3, 1925, p. 5.

 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._Cory
  4. McIver, Stuart. Glimpses of South Florida History. Miami: Florida Flair Books, 1988. 



Tags: New River history, Fort Lauderdale history, Charles. B. Cory, Joe Jefferson, New River, party boat

Seminole Shirttail Charlie - Fort Lauderdale's early character

Shirttail Charlie 1910
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 

By Jane Feehan

With a past that was the stuff of folklore rather than fact, Seminole Shirttail Charlie (1855-1925) was one of early Fort Lauderdale's colorful characters.

He was known for dressing in nothing but a shirt. News accounts of the day claimed he killed his wife and was sentenced by tribal elders to “be attired in a one-piece garment reaching half way to his knees and slit on the sides.” Others claimed he committed only some minor infraction that earned him the shirt sentence.

In reality Shirttail Charlie dressed in garb that was customary among Seminole men a few decades before he roamed the streets of Fort Lauderdale. It was reported that he was a panhandler. “He begs from the white man for the few pennies necessary for his existence ...” On the other hand, Charlie was also thought to have been an athlete and fearless hunter in his younger days.

Seminole men circa 1900
Florida State Archives

Shirttail Charlie Tommie died in 1925 and was buried near his family’s former camp, near today’s Broward Boulevard east of I-95. A restaurant on the New River bearing his name closed a few years ago.

Sources: 

Genealogical Society of Broward County

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).
Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Miami News, June 19, 1924

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Seminole history, history of Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale's first restaurant, first tamales and top character

By Jane Feehan

One story, a true one about early Fort Lauderdale, often crosses my mind as a terrific opening scene of a movie. A dog walks into a lunch stand. With an air of purpose, he trots behind seated customers who appear amused but not surprised to see this frequent visitor. Duke the dog finds a vacant spot at the counter where he drops a nickel from his mouth. The owner of the town’s first restaurant takes the nickel as payment for two hamburgers. He wraps the food in paper; Duke gently picks up the order to deliver to his master, baseball player and animal trainer, Joe Atchinson.*

The story is as colorful as that of the restaurant’s owner Ed Caruth, by then a fixture at the city’s Tarpon baseball games where he sold soda and hot dogs. Kids knew him as “Uncle Ed.”

No one knows when he first came to town, but Caruth was here, according to late historian Philip Weidling, when the notorious Ashley Gang was still robbing banks in South Florida (1915-1924). He opened the first restaurant (there was one other, a diner, but open only in winter). Caruth opened on Brickell Avenue and named it the Hungry Man’s Friend.
(Years later this address transitioned to the site of the famed political hub, Brown’s Restaurant).

Caruth, known for his long black mustache and for using a large multi-purpose knife to flip burgers (new to the American palate then), slice buns, swat roaches and trim his ‘stache, was well-liked by all but seemingly restless. Sometime in 1918 or the year before, he ventured to Pascagoula, MS where he cooked at a hotel restaurant near a large shipyard. By October 1918, he returned to Florida because, as he told a Miami newspaper, “influenza was everywhere.”

Caruth also looked into prospects at Lake Worth where it was booming. But he reappeared in Fort Lauderdale afterward where he opened Ed’s Lunch Stand (or Ed's Place) on Wall Street. Newspaper accounts indicate he was busy at the stand in 1930. By that time everyone in town knew Ed and he knew all. Many delighted in telling stories about the popular eatery, including the time someone asked for half a scrambled egg and he cooked up a half dozen. Business was brisk and everyone expected him to continue to do well. He did, until the Great Depression, when he was forced to close the restaurant.

Ever enterprising, Caruth converted a baby buggy into a cart he painted red and included a sign, “Hot Tamales.” Those were probably the city's first. Refusing tips, he made and sold tamales along the New River waterfront until rationing policies of World War II made meat a scarcity. By then, he could barely walk. It was reported in 1946 that he had moved to Miami to live with relatives; that move could have been well before that. The trail and the timeline, always sketchy, ends there but not before the Caruth name and character was known throughout the city.

In 1959, a story in the Fort Lauderdale News suggested the city’s history included five top characters:
1. Charlie Swaggerty
2. Larry Crabtree
3. Ed Caruth
4. Commodore Brook
5. Sam Drake

Who would be Fort Lauderdale’s top five characters today?

*Atchinson, a catcher, also a successful animal trainer, wound up in the movie biz in Hollywood, CA. More on him in another story …

Sources:

Burghard, A. and Weidling, P. Checkered Sunshine.University of Florida Press, Gainesville: 1966
Miami Metropolis, Oct. 23, 1918
Fort Lauderdale News, July 14, 1930
Fort Lauderdale News Sept. 20, 1932
Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 20, 1938
Fort Lauderdale News, Aug 14, 1946
Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 7, 1946
Fort Lauderdale News, Feb. 22, 1955
Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 28, 1959

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale characters, Fort Lauderdale restaurants, influenza

"A magnificent event": thousands at opening of Fort Lauderdale High School, 1915

FLHS circa 1940s

By Jane Feehan

The opening of Fort Lauderdale Central High School* on Sept. 17, 1915 was a big deal. So much so, keynoter Governor Park Trammell told his audience dressed in holiday garb he would forego political chat for the day in honor of its dedication.

It was reported thousands came on horse, mule and foot from near and far to participate in opening ceremonies, a “magnificent event,” which included the raising of a flag to the roof of the school, a speech by the governor, patriotic music and a roster of city notables. Many local businesses closed for all or part of the day. A parade commenced at 2:30 p.m. from the “city square” to the school built on property donated by the Stranahan family.

The Patriotic Order of Sons of America took place of honor at attention by the entrance and inside a large room decorated with flags for the event. Also on hand was presenter Col. Robert J. Reed, president of the city’s Board of Trade, Rev. Dr. Usleman from the M.E. Church, James Rickards, principal of the high school, the Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club, retiring County School Superintendent R.E. Hall and the man to follow him, James Holding.

In his dedication speech, Gov. Trammell said “today may well be recorded in the annals of Fort Lauderdale … a live and wide-awake town.” In a patriotic setting punctuated with martial music, Principal James Rickards pledged students would be true to the principles of the flag. “I pray with you that war may never descend upon us, for peace has done as much for the flag as has the bloody battlefield … boys and girls of the school will be patriots in war as in peace.”

Festivities, including music and singing continued into night in anticipation of the doors opening three days later. Enrollment at opening was reported at about 75. By January 1916, the end of the school’s first semester, music could be heard, courtesy of its new choral group, throughout the new $50,000 building.** Also, the newly chartered Literary Society established its debate club, a collection of the “efficiently speaking.” The close of that month marked the end of the first 16-week semester and the first final exams of Fort Lauderdale Central High School.

Broward County had been established April 30 that year and Fort Lauderdale was, indeed,to quote the governor, “a wide-awake town.”

*Later named Fort Lauderdale High School

** Original building demolished 1970. Fort Lauderdale High School relocated to NE 4^th Avenue in the 1960s

Sources:

Miami Metropolis, Sept. 17, 1915

Miami Metropolis, Jan. 21, 1916

Tags: history of Fort Lauderdale High School. Fort Lauderdale history, Broward County history, Florida history, Jane Feehan

Las Olas Inn, long gone and mostly forgotten Fort Lauderdale

Las Olas Inn - postcard
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

    

By Jane Feehan

During the late 1800s, pioneer Frank Stranahan’s activities centered on his trading post along the New River in what became Fort Lauderdale. But others came who discovered the beach and were to have an equally important place in the city’s history and development.

In 1893 Chicagoan and counsel to Standard Oil Hugh T. Birch decided to pass on an invitation from Henry Flagler to visit Palm Beach and decided to head south; he set sail on a boat lent to him by Flagler. With only a vague notion of where he was headed, Birch sought refuge from a storm in what was referred to at the time as New River Sound, today the site of Bahia Mar. He liked what he saw and soon bought up beachside property for a reported 75 cents an acre.

Birch introduced fellow Chicagoan J. McGregor Adams to the beach area by 1896. Adams, a brass manufacturer, also became a heavy beach investor. One news story reports a beach cottage was built at Las Olas and the ocean by Adams; other reports say both Birch and Adams had the two-room structure built but they later split, dividing holdings. The house was constructed by pioneer Ed King who mounted the building upon molded concrete blocks he made in the sand. Whatever the genesis of ownership, the structure launched another legacy.

Las Olas Inn
State Archives of  Florida

Adams played host there, it was reported, to an interesting lineup of guests that included author Theodore Dreiser and Senator Robert Follette. In 1904, less than 10 years later, Adams died. His estate sold the beach house and property in 1906 or 1911 (depending on account) to Thomas E. Watson, one-time Georgia senator and interestingly, author of a noted history of France.

1955 demolition, Courtesy of 
State Archives of  Florida,
Florida Memory

What ensued was a chain of owners of the picturesque inn and property; its story spanned several decades

Watson sold the property and rambling structure a few years later to D.C. Alexander (a park in his name lies a block south of Las Olas). He then sold it to G.E. Henry for a reported $30,000—after the Las Olas bridge was built in 1917. Henry, who built the Broward Hotel, was annoyed by the sound of surf. He rented the building, known by then as the Las Olas Inn, to Captain and Mrs. J.B. Vreeland who converted the structure to hotel use. 

Henry reclaimed the inn in 1920 for Broward Hotel staff housing, but sold the package to George Simon around 1923. Simon didn’t hang on to the property and hotel for long. In new hands, the Las Olas Inn went into foreclosure in 1926 after the historic hurricane. Ownership reverted that year to Simon. It proved to be a fortuitous stroke of luck; Simon’s son, George Jr., ran a successful hotel there for 22 years.

In 1925, a tent colony, popular vacation housing in South Florida at the time, was set up at the Las Olas Inn. Tents—25 of them—were advertised as “ventilated and luxurious” offering showers, bathtubs and with the same service that was available in the main wooden structure. In 1939 the inn, with several cottages by then, advertised rooms in the main building having an ocean view facing east and a view of the “New River Sound on the West.” Dining was available on the veranda.  

The Las Olas Inn and its three acres went through several owners and iterations until 1955, when it was demolished to make way for the Las Olas Plaza. Many will remember the popular Forum restaurant in the plaza. In 1967, a 243-room Holiday Inn was built on the site, later home to the Button Lounge.

The property is now the city's Las Olas Oceanside Park, or LOOP, a site for beachgoers and community events.

Note: In March 2018, the Sun-Sentinel reported land owners Lior Avidor and Aiton “AJ” Yaari, could be looking into selling nearby property for a huge redevelopment project. They’ve amassed a string of properties on the beach-facing block just north of Las Olas Boulevard that includes the historic Elbo Room.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-sb-beach-tower-lasolas-20180316-story.html

Las Olas Inn, first beach hotel in Fort Lauderdale
Florida State Archives

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 15, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 30, 1928

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 1, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, March 29, 1930,

Fort Lauderdale News, May 20, 1931

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 29, 1939

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov 16, 1943

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 16, 1953

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 16, 1953

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 26, 1954

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 31, 1955

Fort Lauderdale News, March 4, 1967

Sun-Sentinel, Oct. 7, 1982

Sun-Sentinel, Aug. 8, 1991

Sun-Sentinel, March 8, 2018

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1800s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Fort Lauderdale Beach history, Jane Feehan, history of Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale: Once hustling little village with

Fort Lauderdale  New River circa 1910
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Not much more than an overnight stop for the mail coach that traveled between Lemon City* and West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale in the 1890s was home to businessman Frank Stranahan and a few Seminoles. Many of us in Fort Lauderdale who have been here awhile know something about our early history, but below are a few numbers to add to the tale.

Stranahan’s trading post or mail stop (now a museum), sat on the banks of the New River, estimated at the time to average 26 feet in depth; ferry service was provided for its crossing. Eight rooms, eight by six feet were available for visitors at the post. Houses in the area at that time were constructed with thick red paper nailed to framing. Primitive times, however, would soon yield to land buying, farming and development, especially after Henry M. Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway carried its first passengers into Fort Lauderdale Feb. 22, 1896.

Farmers were soon drawn to the area by the rich, dark soil of the nearby Everglades. By 1905, it was reported they were growing profitable tomato crops in the east Everglades. “The territory around Fort Lauderdale has the world beaten when it comes to growing fine tomatoes,” wrote one reporter for the Miami Metropolis. Farmers also grew potatoes, cabbage and beans. An acre could yield up to $300 in vegetables. About 100,000 crates of vegetables were shipped out of Fort Lauderdale in 1909.

By 1910, a year of land speculation here, the “hustling little village” (as it was described) of Fort Lauderdale had grown with:

• About 1,500 residents (some accounts say 750). By 1911, 5,000 called the village home, thanks to a soon-to-go-bust speculative land boom;
• Two bridges spanning the New River;
• Two concrete buildings at the trading post with about 30 rooms—the New River Hotel and the Keystone. In all, three hotels in the village;
• Two boatyards;
• 50 buildings, mostly residences under construction, estimated by a reporter to range in cost from $300 to $10,000 (an unrealistically high estimate?);
• A public school nearing completion;
• Methodist church about complete for $4,000; a Baptist church constructed for $3,500;
• A three-story Masonic temple for $8,000;
• Fort Lauderdale State Bank built for $2,500 (without fixtures);
• Three general stores.

More than 20,000 farmers, a reporter wrote, settled in the area; about 200,000 acres were sold with shaky (and shady) speculative plans to sell in 10-acre allotments. Fort Lauderdale Fruit Lands Company purchased 2,000 acres a mile north of New River and two of three canals constructed to drain the Everglades emptied into that river. The drainage project to extend farming and prevent crop flooding eventually failed. Farm prospects diminished—along with the land boom—but Fort Lauderdale was incorporated as a town (not enough qualified voters for a city) March 27, 1911.  The town limit was set at one and one-half miles square.

Today, this “hustling little village” sits on more than 36 square miles, is home to about 177,000 and is among the top ten largest cities in the state.

Fort Lauderdale, 2018

_____

*Lemon City never incorporated and held loose borders extending from NW 54 Street to approximately NW 79 Street in Miami, today’s “Little Haiti.”

Sources:

Miami Metropolis, June 1, 1905

Miami Metropolis, Sept. 3, 1910

Miami Daily Metropolis, March 28, 1911

City of Fort Lauderdale

Weidling, Philip J., Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale farming, Everglades farming, Florida East Coast Railroad history