Merle Fogg: Fort Lauderdale's first aviator a man of several firsts

Merle Fogg
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory

 

By Jane Feehan  

Fort Lauderdale’s first airport, Merle Fogg Field, opened on an abandoned golf course May 1, 1929 – a year after its namesake died in an air crash in West Palm Beach.

Several firsts are credited to Merle Fogg (1898-1928), Fort Lauderdale’s first aviator. He was the first licensed pilot in Maine, the first to fly a plane from Maine to Florida, the first to land a plane on Andros Island and on New Providence Island (Nassau).

With his airplane, Fogg helped create a snapshot of Broward County during good and bad times.  His flights over the county provided a picture of possibilities during the land boom days of the early 1920s. After the hurricane of 1926, Fogg flew reporters over its aftermath, giving them an opportunity to capture the extent of  the storm’s destruction.

On the day of the fatal crash, Fogg had invited 22-year-old Thomas Lochrie, son of Fort Lauderdale pioneer and president of Broward Bank and Trust Co.,  John Lochrie, on a ride to Miami to photograph the Shrine convention. When he returned to the hangar, student pilot C.S. Nelson invited them for a ride. Nelson was at the controls when the plane went into a tailspin and crashed. He survived with minor injuries; Fogg and Lochrie were killed.

A year later, the city of Fort Lauderdale converted Southside Golf Course into Merle Fogg Field. Fogg had long hoped the city would open an air field. The Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station opened at the site during World War II and today, Merle Fogg Field is the site of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. 

Merle Fogg is buried in Bangor, Maine.

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

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

Fort Lauderdale News, May 7, 1978

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale's first aviator, Merle Fogg, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, film researcher, History of Fort Lauderdale

Intracoastal Waterway Toll Days

Intracoastal Waterway
Fort Lauderdale 1947,
Dept. of Commerce

Today, boaters cruise the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in Florida for free but it wasn’t always that way. It was a privately owned, dredged, and operated canal – the East Coast Canal - for a few decades after 1881. By the 1920s, at six points along the way (including one south of Dania in Broward County), chains were pulled taut beneath the surface of the water to obstruct passage until a toll was paid.  Tolls from three to 10 cents were assessed based on the type of vessel and, if commercial, by a percentage of freight.

Congress authorized the US Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of federal ownership in 1920.  Resultant to that and the efforts of Fort Lauderdale’s Commodore A.H. Brook, the Florida Inland Navigation District was created in 1928. Brook, on the district’s first board of directors, successfully campaigned to raise money through bonds to purchase the canal from its private owners. By 1929, the federal government was given title to the waterway and tolls were abolished. The 17^th Street Causeway Bridge was once named for Commodore Brook. Thanks, Commodore …          

Intracoastal at Sunrise Blvd.,
 Fort Lauderdale

Sources: For an excellent, comprehensive history of Florida’s East Coast Canal see: A History of Florida’s East Coast Canal: The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway from Jacksonville to Miami by William G. Crawford, Jr  (1997). The article is posted at http://cms5.revize.com/revize/floridainland/about_us/docs/browardlegacy.pdf

 See also the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society. 

Tags: Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, Florida history, Fort Lauderdale history, East Coast Canal, Commodore Brook, Broward County history, history of Florida, Florida in the early 1900s

Fort Lauderdale beach "skyline" 1965 ...

Fort Lauderdale Magazine, November, 1965 
Courtesy of Broward  County Historical Commission

This cover provides a great panorama of the Fort Lauderdale coast in 1965. The tallest buildings then were those aggregated at the entrance to Port Everglades, including Sky Harbor East and Breakwater Towers. 

Point of Americas was not yet part of the horizon; it was completed in 1969.

Top stories in this 1965 issue: "The General Builders Story," and "The New City: Coral Springs.

The more recent photo below (and continuously changing view) of the same coastline from the north (near Oakland Park Boulevard), shows a city now dominated by tall buildings.

Galt Mile 2019

 

Beach from Oakland Park south view 2010

        

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s, Fort Lauderdale beach

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

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.

 Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

______

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

Pompano, a railway stop with no name until ...

Florida East Coast Rail Depot circa 1930
 State Archives of  Florida

According to the Tropical Sun in 1914, the town of Pompano (now Pompano Beach), was named as a stop along the growing Florida East Coast Railway in 1896 in honor of an "excellent meal."

Eighteen years ago, the railroad went through to Miami, opening up the whole country as it went and one of our pioneer surveyors, Mr. Franklin Sheen, was kept very busy spying out the land and locating settlers near to the railroad.

In his explorations up and down the beach to Miami, he selected Pompano as the leading farming settlement in the whole county and succeeded in inducing people to invest there and it was necessary to give it a name. While consulting about a name at the old Park Cottage, in West Palm Beach, in company with some prospective purchasers, the company had had Pompano fish for dinner and in view of the fact that they all considered it an “excellent” meal it was determined that the name “Pompano” would be a good name for an “excellent” farming country and forthwith it was “dubbed” Pompano and that name went into the railroad with the requirement that they put a station there …

_______
For more about the Tropical Sun, see: Two cousins ...
http://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2013/03/two-cousins-stage-line-and-founding-of.html


Tags: Florida history, Pompano Beach history, Broward County history, Florida East Coast Railway, film research

A gift from an 1884 exposition chokes Florida waterways for decades

 

Water Hyacinth 

                                               

By Jane Feehan

Once called “America’s most deadly flower,” the water lily or water hyacinth was introduced to Florida before 1900.

According to some, the Japanese government imported the plants from Venezuela to give away as favors at the International Cotton Exposition in New Orleans in 1884. Also known as Eichhorinia crassipies, it bears an attractive lavender flower.

One plant was taken by a “Mrs. Fuller” to her home on the St. John’s River in North Florida. She placed it in her pond where it took over (one plant can generate 3,000 in 50 days). In clearing the growth, Fuller threw plants into the St. John’s River.

A couple of years later, a farmer brought them from the St. John’s to his farm near the Kissimmee River to feed his cattle; mostly water, the plants were abandoned as a source of nutrition. Within a few years, this free-floating plant that can grow up to three feet in height was choking waterways of South Florida.

August. 1954

In some places hyacinth covered water so thickly people could walk across canals on them. The attractive plant accelerates evaporation and depletes water of nutrients for wildlife. Over the years, millions of dollars and a number of solutions have been employed to get rid of the nuisance: underwater mowing, feeding them to manatees, fire, explosives, arsenic and finally, chemicals.

Water hyacinth have not disappeared but are now under control in South Florida. The plant has also caused problems in Louisiana, Egypt, the Congo, the Lake Victoria region of Kenya, Australia and Asia

.____ 

Sources:

McIver, Stuart. Glimpses of South Florida History. Miami: Florida Flair Books, 1988.

www.columbia.edu

Miami News, Aug. 11, 1954

History and a totally new look for Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale

 

Now open

954-525-6666

piersixtysix.com

Pier Top opened March 2025

By Jane Feehan

Phillips Petroleum, when headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, purchased land in south Fort Lauderdale for a gas station in 1956.   Within a few short years, the parcel, bordered on its west by the Intracoastal Waterway, began to evolve into the world-class hotel and resort that claims part of Fort Lauderdale’s skyline today.

Courtesy, Broward County

The oil company built a fuel dock on the parcel in 1957, then installed a marina for more than 100 yachts. In November that year, Phillips advertised the grand opening of a restaurant in the building that today anchors the west side of the resort. By 1959, a two-story hotel was added.  Pier 66’s reputation grew during those boom years as did its need for more rooms.

One of the primary designers of its iconic 17-story tower was Richard F. Humble (1925-2011), a Phillips Petroleum architect. The addition was constructed in 1964 for nearly $6 million. The project included about 250 rooms and a revolving top floor cocktail lounge (open only for special events today); both opened in 1965 but not after some construction problems. The building leaned slightly to one side and was righted with extra fill. When completed, the resort sprawled across 22 acres and berthed 142 boats.

  Florida State Archives/,
Florida Memory 1996

The fortunes of Phillips Petroleum changed in the 1980s, the decade of takeovers. According to news accounts, it fought two hostile takeovers and incurred $4.5 billion in debt. Assets were sold off to reduce that debt and included the sale of Pier 66 in 1985. 

In 2004 the complex was sold to the Blackstone Group of New York. Blackstone bought the Pier 66 property from H. Wayne Huizenga's Boca Resorts, Inc. 

About that new look 

In 2016 Pier 66 (new signage reads sixty-six) was purchased by Tavistock Development of Orlando. New construction on the 22-acre property includes a revamped hotel, two 11-story condos (height limit was under consideration as of 11/1/22), 12 waterfront homes with 5,000 sq feet each and retail and office space. 

For those of us who grew up with this iconic hotel, the property will appear unrecognizable. Some say the new look will "enhance its legacy." 

UPDATE: Pier Sixty-Six opened late January 2025 and it's stunning. To refer to the project as a "makeover" doesn't do it justice. The $1 billion spent to improve, rebuild and offer more than the hotel ever did turns a page in Florida hospitality.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports than it includes 12 restaurants with the Pier Top opened in March 2025, a spa and a marina with dockage for large, really large, yachts.

The hotel now has 325 rooms and rates start at $599 a night. One night in the Presidential Suite goes for $4,999. Residences start in the millions. 

The new Pier Sixty-Six does more than enhance the legacy of the hotel. It will redefine Fort Lauderdale's hospitality style. 

May 20, 2024 - nearing completion and opening late 2024. New entrance on left in this photo

Agust 20, 2024 - the sign is up ...

August 20, 2024               Spectacular new entrance (below). Faces west toward the Intracoastal. 

New mid-rise residence (more than one) across from new lobby entrance of the hotel

December 2022 - Lots of activity

Construction on nearly all of the cleared property to the Intracoastal

August 2022 update: Not much new in this photo

2021 UPDATE: The Sun-Sentinel reported on 5/4/21 that Tavistock says the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed the project and pushed an estimated completion to fourth quarter 2023. 

Update Jan. 1, 2023: Lots of building activity on grounds around the hotel tower.

Update August, 2021: no activity at site

For more, see: 

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-bz-pier-66-redevelopment-ss-prem-20210504-g4gd3c3rung55nqy46pwt6vabe-story.html

2020 update photo/video: 

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-bz-pier-sixty-six-rebuild-20200227-ekdi5boljfc3xop5hv3zb7pkju-story.html

2018 UPDATE. New owners have new plans for Pier 66: portions of it will be developed into condos. See:   http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-pier-66-vote-passed-20180711-story.html

Copyright © 2016 2020, 2024, 2025

Sources:

Broward County Historical Commission
Miami News:  Nov. 22, 1957
Miami News:  Dec. 27, 1964

Sun-Sentinel, July 23, 2014

Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 27, 2020

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jan. 26, 2025

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, history of Fort Lauderdale, Pier 66, Pier Sixty-Six, Florida architect