Fort Lauderdale and the seasonal sweep of the city broom

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale was image conscious from its earliest days. Preparing for winter season visitors with clean-up squads was a common sight during the 1920s. “The entire city could feel the sweep of the city broom.”

Squads also cleaned up for school openings and baseball games. Beautification efforts included planting and removal of weeds, sand spurs and palmettos. It wasn’t always about beautification and weeds and trash. Fort Lauderdale’s Board of Health cleared vegetation to mitigate mosquito breeding.

Cleaning vacant lots and clearing the banks of waterways produced some amusing results. Stories about the removal and cutting down of thick undergrowth pull back the curtain on days before the city’s high-velocity development. In 1928 teams cleared weeds and other vegetative matter between Las Olas and south to the Casino Pool for visitors and local beachgoers. New River and Las Olas beach were considered two of “the city’s greatest assets.”

City teams also cleaned up the Rio Vista neighborhood. Thanks to the crew's work, residents reportedly could see across the river [New River] for the first time as well as its boat traffic. It was also noted that the owners of an apartment building “in a certain section of the city” adjacent to New River said the clean-up squad made “the lovely stream visible.” As a result, the owners raised rents “on the strength of the proximity to the water.”

In a West Las Olas neighborhood, a clean-up crew discovered sidewalks the “public has almost forgotten.”  A nearby vacant lot cleanup produced discarded mattresses, automobiles, city sewer piping and live dynamite that had been buried on the spot for two years.  

Stranahan Field underwent some critical clean up in 1925 that minimized excuses for errors and improved its image. Baseballs hit to the outfield were frequently lost in high grass and weeds. Cutting down the vegetation produced a “first class ball field.”  

Ross Clark, Board of Health president, said they could not clean up the entire city. “People are going to have get involved in the “cleanup cause” if we are to be absolutely pure and undefiled.”  A cleanup week was designated by the city in 1936 to foster public participation in clean up activities.

We’re still not, nor could ever be, "absolutely pure and undefiled," but people get involved today by volunteering for waterway and beach cleanups. The city has relegated lot clearing to property owners and trash pickup services.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, June 24, 1925

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 6, 1928

Fort Lauderdale News, Oct. 12, 1928

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 15, 1928

Fort Lauderdale News, Nov. 1, 1930

Fort Lauderdale News, Sept. 9, 1931

Fort Lauderdale News, Dec. 14, 1936

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s

Lauderdale Beach Hotel: 1930s, in WWII ... and what remains today

Lauderdale Beach Hotel
circa 1937
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Built in 1937, the Lauderdale Beach Hotel was one of the two largest hotels in Broward County when the U.S. entered World War II (the other was the Tradewinds Hotel).  The 500-room Lauderdale Beach Hotel, the Tradewinds, the Edmar apartments and adjacent beach were taken over by the U.S. Navy August 1, 1943. They were used as a navy radar training school until the winter of 1945 when they were released to civilian trade.

Fusion of old/new

Today, only the front part of the Lauderdale Beach Hotel remains, occupied by a cafe and attached via a garage to the upscale Las Olas Club condominium. The hotel with its distinct architecture, a vestige of the 1930s art deco or art moderne style was partially rescued by preservationists when condo developers bought the property. A condition of development was to leave the distinctive facade of the old structure intact.

The Las Olas Club was built behind and attached to the old Lauderdale Beach Hotel in 2007. Condos there range from $799,000 to $3.9 million (about $540 a square foot) – quite a change for the old Fort Lauderdale landmark, site of so many special occasions, conventions and vacations since 1937.

Copyright © 2019, 2021, 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan
________________

Sources:

Miami News, Aug. 19, 1945

Miami News, May 18, 1943

http://blogsouthflorida.com/south-florida-oceanfront-condos/Las-Olas-Beach-Club

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale hotel history, Fort Lauderdale in WWII, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s

Snapshot: Fort Lauderdale during the Great Depression

Federal aid to community development 1933
Fort Lauderdale
Florida State Archives

Fort Lauderdale experienced a devastating hurricane and land bust that sent it spiraling into the throes of the Great Depression two to three years before the rest of the nation. Tourists visited but spent little money. Land sales plummeted to a halt.

Some facts about those depression years:

        •  An estimated 25 percent of homes were foreclosed for taxes and other liens; about 80 percent of  lots and non-farm lands were likewise lost. 

        •   Fort Lauderdale’s population reached nearly 8,700 (it doubled by 1940).

        •  The average assessed value of homes in 1934 was about $4,500.

        •   Illegal gambling, and bootlegging (until 1933) flourished.

        •   Grits and Grunts topped menus at homes and restaurants. An inexpensive meal,  it included small fish or grunts caught off nearby reefs fried in oil and served with grits.

For more about Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, see index.


________________
Sources:
Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/03815512v1ch03.pdf
Miami News, March 9, 1934




Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale during the Great Depression, film researcher

Fort Lauderdale's second judge, Fred Shippey: "new fangled" gambling, a house preserved, and Johnny Weissmuller

Shippey House restored

      

220 SW 3rd Ave

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

By Jane Feehan

A piece of old Fort Lauderdale, the Shippey House, was moved from its original location at 215 SW 7th Ave. to "Old Fort Lauderdale," near the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society in 2011. There, it underwent restoration and was completed in 2016.  

The house, more than 100 years old, is of interest to historical preservationists because it was constructed of tough - and now extinct - Dade County pine and was one of a very few two-story cottages built about 1914. It was also home to Fred B. Shippey (1877-1934), Broward County’s second judge.

Not a lot is known about Judge Shippey. Records indicate he was born in Illinois, that his father was a judge and that they declared themselves farmers on a census.  Father, son and family moved to Fort Lauderdale  in 1912. Fred Shippey succeeded the first county judge, JF Bunn, who held the post from 1915 until his death in 1920. Shippey probably did not hold a law degree (not unusual at the time and in some states, like Texas, not unheard of today).

It was thought Judge Shippey served well and honestly (1920-1933). He also assisted disabled children throughout the state and belonged to an organization that built a hospital for them. In looking through  old newspaper archives, I did find something interesting about his legal career.

In 1927 the judge rendered a decision that a “new fangled wagering system” at Pompano race track (not today’s Pompano Park but a predecessor) was not gambling. The system operated on the premise that wagers were really donations to horse owners (don’t laugh). This infuriated Gov. John W. Martin who sided with the Florida Supreme Court in its decision to close the race track to end all semblance of gambling.

The governor sent a letter to Broward Sheriff Paul C. Bryan demanding that he shut down the track that afternoon and if he didn’t he would be replaced. So would Judge Shippey, if he did not cooperate. Miami attorney James M. Carson, long an active agent to close the track, remarked that it was the first time in history a case was appealed from the supreme court of Florida to a county judge. “I like Judge Fred Shippey,” said Carson. “ ‘Brutus is an honorable man.’ May it be remembered that Brutus had distinguished company.”  

Gambling had a wide circle of protectors in Broward County until nearly 1950.

Judge Shippey presided over criminal and other cases and conducted many marriages. Among the marriages he performed was that of swimming athlete and film star (Tarzan), Johnny Weissmuller to Broadway actress Bobby Arnst in March, 1931. The couple met weeks before on Valentine's Day. They divorced in 1933.

CP Tours (Cycle Party) a sightseeing tour agency, occupies the house: https://fortlauderdale.cycleparty.com/about/

 During the moving process in 2011

 Tags: History of Fort Lauderdale, Gambling in Broward in the 1920s, Judge Shippey, Pompano race track in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale history, old Fort Lauderdale architecture, old Fort Lauderdale homes, film researcher

Sources:

Miami News, March 12, 1927.

Sacramento Bee, March 5, 1931

Shippyhouse.org

Sun-Sentinel, May 31, 2012.

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

Sears story in Fort Lauderdale didn't begin with Searstown

Andrews Avenue 1939
Florida State Archives/ Florida Memory

By Jane Feehan

Sears, Roebuck and Company, founded in 1886, has had its ups and downs over the years. The largest retailer in the United States until 1989, it now occasionally announces store closings.  Fort Lauderdale residents wonder if Searstown on Federal Highway at Sunrise will be shutting its doors. Now they know. In January 2022  the landmark department store announced its closing after 66 years. 

Few know the history of Sears in Fort Lauderdale; it did not begin with Searstown.

Sears opened its first Fort Lauderdale store Jan. 7, 1937 at 101 S. Andrews Ave. Mayor Lewis Moore (in office 1937-39) officiated at the event along with Chamber of Commerce President J.D. Camp. A reported 2,000 residents “thronged” to the 19,000 sq. foot store. With plenty of product lines to choose from, the store also operated an automotive department offering free tire and battery servicing to those who purchased the products at Sears. Opening day was so busy Store Manager E.E. Carroll summoned additional help to assist at registers and in the aisles.

Sears’ business continued to expand in the growing city. In 1955 the new Searstown opened at 901 N. Federal Hwy where it entered memories of current long-time residents. The transition day between the closing of the store on South Andrews and the opening on Federal was the first business day Sears had closed in the 18 years it had been in Fort Lauderdale.

Searstown, touted as having plenty of parking--and always had--was anchor store to a collection of 15 other businesses by 1958: grocer Piggly Wiggly (second largest in the center), Billet Doux Card Shop, Stevens Bakery, Dr. Harold S. Doubleday, optometrist, Pribbles Jewelry, Searstown Beauty Salon, Chat-N-Nibble Sandwich Shop, Deluxe Barber Shop, Monty’s 5 & 10, Gift Box, Broward Drug and Surgical Supply, the Religious Shop, Dr. William Migden, physician and surgeon, and Town Properties Realty.

By 1958, Searstown was upgraded in the Sears roster of highest revenue producers to number 75 out of its top 122 stores. I wonder how it ranks today … 

Update:

Sun-Sentinel Nov 7, 2023

Denver-based Aimco announces plans to develop three mixed-use towers on the property. 

As of early 2024, the property has been cleared.

Oct. 15, 2018 national story on Sears bankruptcy filing.
 http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/ct-biz-sears-bankruptcy-20181015-story.html

Update: Sun-Sentinel 5/14/23

Plans uncertain for closed Searstown. RK Centers has already bought/sold the property. Another developer, Aimco, has proposed tamed down version of the first: 797 apts instead of 954, three towers instead of four but city doesn't like it. Not spectacular enough. Dubbed 901 North, the new plan presents no "gravitas" as city entrance. ( JF note: Now Mayor T is worried about traffic impact. Now, he's worried. Others worry about lack of infrastructure to support it ... now they're worried). Anyway, nothing for 2023 project start. 

Searstown closed January 2022 to make way for a $400 million mixed use project of apartments (condos?), offices and retail space by RK Developers. The project is expected to begin mid 2023. Get ready for even more traffic nightmares.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-ne-fort-lauderdale-searstown-closes-20220122-koppuu6pcjfpjakv5t2qdmmjba-story.html

Update January 2024:

Searstown completely torn down.

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 6, 1937

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 7, 1937

Fort Lauderdale News, Aug. 10, 1958

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, History of Fort Lauderdale, Florida retail history, South Florida history, Broward County history, About Fort Lauderdale

Jane Feehan

Whaling off Fort Lauderdale ... a gruesome tale

Beached whales in Florida 1908
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

When most of us think about whale watching, Alaska and Cabo San Lucas in Baja California come to mind, not the waters off Fort Lauderdale and Southeast Florida.  

In 1935, The New York Times reported on a six-hour whale chase and its bloody outcome off Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. Many today would consider it a gruesome tale.

Captain Frank Merritt, a fishing guide operating out of Port Everglades, spotted two whales a couple of miles off the coast one day at 9:30 a.m. In his tiny “cabin cruiser,” loaded with seven harpoons and 200 rounds of rifle bullets, Merritt set out to give chase and make a kill. His plan was to separate the two whales, which appeared to be a mother and her calf.

The fishing guide harpooned the eight-ton, 32-foot baby whale, which then dove into the blue and took Merritt’s 22-foot boat on a wild ride southward. The furious mother whale immediately attacked the vessel leaving several ribs of its bow slightly damaged. Another fisherman, Captain Jack Weygant, came by to assess the smash up and his boat was also rammed.

The unfolding drama drew four more boats, including one from the U.S. Coast Guard. All performed maneuvers to chase off the 72-foot mother while her baby was being peppered with rifle shot and “stuck” with harpoons.  In all, three boats were rammed in the chase.

The hunt ended at 4 p.m. off Hollywood when the calf, bleeding profusely, died and the exhausted mother disappeared.  “It’s just a baby,” said Capt. Merritt, who described the chase as the most exciting and dangerous day of his long fishing career. 

The story made the rounds in U.S. newspapers.  Many brought up cruelty to animals and the extinction of whales. Some compared the situation with how the the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would react if the chase were about a cow and her calf.

                                 

By the 1930s, more than 50 thousand whales were killed annually throughout the world. The whales in this story could have been grey whales or northern right (Balaenidae) whales, so-called as they were the right kind to hunt: slow and large.  Because of their size, they don’t breach the water's surface often. Hunting of northern right whales was outlawed in 1937. Today they travel in shipping lanes, which may account, in part, for their near extinction.

Whales feed in cold waters and breed in warm waters during the spring. I asked legendary Fort Lauderdale angler and author Steve Kantner*, about his sighting of whales off South Florida.  He hasn’t seen them frequently but recalled one time that he did from a commercial airplane.

It was a few years back, but I still remember looking out the plane’s window as it started to bank. I’d say we were maybe five miles from shore and less than a mile from the surface.

I was scanning the water, like fisherman do, looking for weed lines—that sort of thing—when I first saw them. Frankly, I had trouble believing my eyes, although in those days my vision was perfect, yet here were two huge whales swimming in tandem. I made them out to be between 30 and 50 feet long. They kept tooling along and their flukes were visible. I watched the whales as we continued our turn and until our position changed. I’ve seen a whale shark before; this time was different.

Kantner also said whales of many species travel the globe; their presence near Florida during the 1930s or now would not be a rare occurrence. 

Commercial whaling is outlawed in many parts of the world with exceptions, one being for nine indigenous communities of Alaska that hunt with limits on the number they can kill.

Fort Lauderdale residents who don’t want to travel to Alaska or Cabo to see a whale may be as close to a sighting as a fishing boat ride off our coast. 

Copyright © 2015, 2022. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

The New York Times, Mar. 25, 1935

Fort Lauderdale News, April 4, 1935

* Photo licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_right_whale.jpg#/media/File:Southern_right_whale.jpg 

Tags: Steve Kantner, whales off Florida, Florida whales 

Stranahan Park: Of Indian burial mounds and shuffleboard

Shuffleboard 1946
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

Stranahan Park
10 E. Broward Blvd.
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

By Jane Feehan

Shuffleboard, with roots traceable to 15th-century England, was big in Fort Lauderdale beginning in the 1930s, especially after Stranahan Park was carved out of land deeded to the city. It was the site of games hosted by the Fort Lauderdale Shuffleboard Club with members from more than 30 states. The park was reportedly built with dirt from Indian burial mounds. Stranahan Park was a "cypress swamp" deeded to the city by Frank Stranahan in the early 1900s. 

In 1928, it was reported that construction of a "novel game" was to be completed at the park and expected to draw a large crowd of players because so many watched its installation. A croquet court was also to be opened. Stranahan Park was already a popular spot with its concerts, checkers and chess tables, and busy horseshoe courts to "make it one of the most beautiful and useful parks along the East coast." 

Today, Stranahan Park remains downtown off Broward, but without shuffleboard.

See index or use search box for more posts on Frank Stranahan.

Today, the 1.6-acre park consists of a pavilion, benches and an open play area. 

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News Jan. 15, 1928

Miami News , March 10, 1934

City of Fort Lauderdale parks

Copyright © 2013, 2021 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale shuffleboard club, Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s, Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian, Frank Stranahan

WFTL and RH Gore - Afloat in the Venice of America

By Jane Feehan

Radio station WFTL, the first in Fort Lauderdale and Broward County has had a series of owners closely associated with the founding and growth of the city. 

  

Fort Lauderdale pioneer Tom M. Bryan bought a radio station in 1937 and used the call letters WFTL. After he operated WFTL for a year and a half, Bryan sold the station to Ralph Horton, who, in turn, sold it to Miami investors. The station became known as WGBS.

Fort Lauderdale was without its own radio station throughout World War II and until 1946, when it went back on the air with new owners Martin E. Dwyer of Chicago and U.S Rep. Dwight L. Rogers of Fort Lauderdale.  They first operated the station across the street from the Governors Club Hotel. Then they moved it to a houseboat on SE 15th Street, along the New River, and advertised with the appropriate slogan, "Afloat in the Venice of America."

During the fall of 1948, R.H. Gore, owner of the Fort Lauderdale Daily News, The Governors Club Hotel, and Sea Ranch Cabana Club, bought the station. At that time he also launched its sister station, WGOR-FM. Gore’s mission for both radio properties was to place “community interest above all other considerations.” The station, then an NBC affiliate, operated at 100 E. Broward Boulevard, where news was read from a desk at the Fort Lauderdale Daily News.

Gore sold the station a few years after acquiring it to Joseph C. Amaturo under whom WFTL reached stability and success. Since then, WFTL has had a long, convoluted string of owners.

In 2013, 850 WFTL, "Florida's Talk Leader," was a 50,000-watt station owned by the James Crystal Radio Group, the largest (according to their website) locally owned and operated radio station group in South Florida. The James Crystal Radio Group also owned and operated WMEN-AM 640, WFLL-AM 1400, and KBXD in Dallas. It filed for bankruptcy in 2014.

Today the station is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting and licensed in West Palm Beach with a reach that includes Broward County. As mentioned, WFTL ownership has been a complicated tale.

Copyright © 2013, 2023. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Gore, Paul A., Past the Edge of Poverty.  Fort Lauderdale: R.H. Gore Company, 1990.

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 9, 1948.

850WFTL.com

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, radio in Fort Lauderdale, historical researcher, film researcher, RH Gore

Las Olas Boulevard opens to Fort Lauderdale beach, its future

Las Olas Boulevard, circa 1930
Florida State Archives/Romer

By Jane Feehan

Thanks to the foresight of Fort Lauderdale founders Frank Stranahan, Tom Bryan and others who formed the Las Olas Bridge Company in 1915, the thick mangrove swamp to the east of downtown was paved and bridged to the beach by January 1917. 

The project expanded  the town’s boundaries and recreational opportunities while broadening its economic base.

Newspapers during the following decades reflect the hopes and dreams for the Las Olas area, today part of Fort Lauderdale’s central business district and, on its east end, site of the famous residential finger islands and canals that earned the city’s designation, “Venice of America.” Real  estate investor Charlie Rodes started dredging the canals according to a method first used, he claimed, in Venice, Italy.

Another early project to create “made” land in the area described in one news story was probably that of M.A Hortt and Robert Dye who, after seeing the success of developer Carl Fisher in Miami Beach with land fill, created Idlewyld, a beautiful residential neighborhood off Las Olas Boulevard:

Captain Seth Perkins of Miami is engaged in pumping 2,500 cubic yards of sand and silt on a tract of 111 acres of tide lands along the New River, between Fort Lauderdale town and Las Olas beach. This made land fill will be converted into suburban home sites. (“Glimpses of Florida,” Miami News, July 15, 1920)

In 1934, during the tough Depression years, Civil Works Administration (CWA) projects helped make Las Olas a picturesque boulevard:

Due to the dredging … and to CWA activities in the city, the Las Olas causeway, leading to Fort Lauderdale beach, has undergone a complete transformation. … tied in with city-wide CWA projects, was the planting of 180 coconut palms … on the causeway. These have been placed 10 feet apart and in a few years will transform this causeway park into a coconut grove. (“Las Olas Span is Transformed,” Miami News, March 10, 1934)

Other sources:

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

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida history, Las Olas Boulevard history, early Fort Lauderdale days, Fort Lauderdale tourism, film researcher,  historical research

Whence the name Fort Liquordale?

By Jane Feehan

Some link the rollicking Spring Break days on Fort Lauderdale beach in the 1960s and 70s with the city’s nickname, “Fort Liquordale.” Others associate it with the city’s partying reputation among some tourists today.

In fact, the name came about during Prohibition (1920 -1933) when bootlegging – carrying liquor by boat from the Bahamas, Cuba and other places to Florida – was a way to earn a living during the mean days of the Depression.

Rum raids were conducted periodically in Broward County to enforce the 18^th Amendment (in effect January 16, 1920, repealed by the 21^st Amendment December 5, 1933). One such raid netted Broward Sheriff Paul Bryan, his deputies, the assistant chief of police Bert Croft, and his men - 32 in all. The arrests grabbed headlines throughout South Florida. One article article above declares: Every Dry Enforcement Agency in the U.S. Takes Part in Huge Mopping Up Drive in Fort Lauderdale District.

The officers, including Bryan, were cleared in a 1929 trial. News accounts of the era describe “fruitful rum raids” and “rum sleuths” ... and thus we have the name, Fort Liquordale. Rum Runners, anyone? 

Copyright © 201, 2022 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on Prohibition, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/11/prohibition-daring-women-of-rum-running.html

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2015/12/prohibition-arrests-leave-broward-fort.html

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2014/03/prohibition-and-only-legal-hanging-in.html

Sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

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

Miami News, Jan. 27, 1927

University of Houston - digital collection

_____________________




Tags: Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale beach, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale restaurants, Fort Liquordale, Prohibition