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| Fort Lauderdale Beach circa 1960 Florida State Archives/Erickson |
By Jane Feehan
A special census was taken* in the mid-1950s in Florida. The trend upward from the official US Census of 1950 was remarkable.
Four cities in the state joined the over-50,000 population rankings with Fort Lauderdale leading the way with the biggest increase:
- Fort Lauderdale soared from the 1950 Census of 36,328 to 62,906
persons in the mid-50s.
- Miami Beach from 46,282 persons in 1950 to a
mid-decade count of 50,981.
- West Palm Beach jumped to 51,015 from 43,162 persons in
1950.
- Pensacola among the four growth cities, tallied
50,954 mid-decade; 43,479 in 1950.
And ...
- Broward County nearly doubled its population in five years –
from 83,933 in 1950 to 159,052 persons by the mid-1950s.
- Dade County also climbed significantly from 495,084 to 703,777 in about five years
By 1960, the population increases in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties accounted for approximately 50 percent of the entire state’s growth.
In 2021, Fort Lauderdale's population was reported at about 182,000 residents. No doubt, 2022 will reflect another substantial increase due to different reasons from those of the 1950s: rising crime and higher taxes in other states.
*Locally-financed special counts were taken to qualify for additional revenues.
For more information on population, see: index for Florida in the 1950s
Sources:
Miami News, Oct. 11, 1957
Palm Beach Post, Nov. 19, 1961
Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale population in the 1950s, South Florida population growth in the 1950s, film researcher, history of Fort Lauderdale