Located at the mouth of the New River and the Atlantic Ocean, the earliest known residents were the Tequesta Indian tribe who dated back to 1450 B.C. Spanish explorers in Florida in the 1600’s, such as Ponce de Leon, called the river Rio Nuevo. It was one of the first rivers in the New World to appear on maps.
In the 1800’s, white agriculture and trading settlements encountered problems with the Indians. Tennessean, Major William Lauderdale, commander of the Seminole War, built several forts along the New River for protection, one being Fort Lauderdale in 1838. Transportation was mostly by waterway or over rugged terrain by stagecoach until Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway in 1895.
The county was named after Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida’s governor from 1905-1909, who drained much of the marshy area for farming and ranching. Frank Stranahan arrived in 1893, establishing a ferry crossing, camp and trading post (a downtown landmark today). In 1902 Fort Lauderdale’s first hotel opened, The New River Inn. Only 52 resided there in 1900. By 1911 when the city incorporated, there was a school, a bank, an electric ice plant, and two newspapers.
The land boom of the 1920’s brought prosperity and development, but the Great Depression put that on hold until after WWII when tourism revived and became one of the city’s greatest industries. With miles of inland waterways, it claims itself the “Venice of America”, Florida’s wonderland with marinas and mega yachts, championship sporting events, and natural paradise.
