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| President Harding on his Florida trip 1921 Florida State Archives |
Fort Lauderdale, originally a one-mile square town, grew in the early 1920s thanks to post-World War I economic expansion. New neighborhoods sprang up: Rio Vista, Sailboat Bend (known then as Westside), Tarpon River, Croissant Park. The First National Bank opened, the first in the city to be backed by the Federal Reserve System. A nine-hole golf course was carved out of a piece of land along Dixie Highway where the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport now sits. And, in 1921, McCrory’s came to town (see photo), opening its doors at Andrews Avenue near the New River.
Fort Lauderdale gained national headlines with the "unintended" visit of President-elect Warren G. Harding in 1921. On the way to Miami down the Intracoastal on a friend’s yacht, Harding and his crew were forced to stop when a dredge blocked transit. Some say it was a ploy to get Harding to visit Fort Lauderdale and play the new golf course. Whether it was will be left to speculation or apocryphal tales. But he did play the course twice - on his way to and from Miami.
By 1926 the boom halted but not before Fort Lauderdale took significant strides past its outpost days of the early 1900s.
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| The year 1921 (see above the name) |
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