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Before that time, most of the people in the area were homesteaders and the only “towns” were Coconut Grove and Lemon City. Persuaded by land offers from Julia Tuttle and William and Mary Brickell, which were accompanied by fresh orange blossoms to prove that Miami was frost-free, Flagler agreed to extend his railroad south from West Palm Beach, build a luxurious hotel, and lay out the city of Miami. John Sewell, who would later serve as Mayor of Miami, observed, “The Florida East Coast Railroad reached here the latter part of April, 1896, and the passenger trains were soon put on.

Then it seemed that the flood gates were opened and people came from everywhere.” Flagler kept his promise by also building the Royal Palm Hotel, constructing houses for workers, dredging a ship channel, and donating land for schools, churches and public buildings. When 368 voters incorporated the city on July 28, 1892, however, the name remained Miami. It all began when Henry B. Plant and Henry Flagler built railroads down each coast, establishing lavish resorts in tropical settings that attracted visitors, speculators and the thousands of workers that such projects require. This increasing accessibility also opened up new industries such as phosphate mining, sponge fishing, cigar making and citrus growing. Immigrants, attracted by the new industries, settled in various regions where some of their descendants still reside today. Greek sponge fishers established a major industry at Tarpon Springs.

Cubans and Spaniards came to work at the cigar factories at Ybor City in Tampa. Other communities were established by Scots, Jews and Slovaks. Swamps were drained, and more rich farmland became accessible. Real estate boomed until 1926, when, with the rest of the country, it busted. Depression, hurricanes and the Mediterranean fruit fly all took their toll until World War II. Then the all-weather state became a major military training ground and the economy began climbing once again. Flagler used his money to make more money with railroads that brought wealthy winter travelers south to Florida’s sunshine.

He spent tens of millions of dollars extending the railroad to Miami and crowned his efforts with the “Railroad That Went to Sea,” linking Key West to the rest of Florida. Soon the boom was on, as land developers stampeded into the state to find the pot of gold at the end of a sandy rainbow. South Florida’s millionaire-making boom peaked in 1925—and began to crash in 1926, when a vicious hurricane struck South Florida, followed by another storm in 1928 and an equally vicious stock market crash in 1929.

Still standing, however, are a bevy of glamorous hotels from the period—Palm Beach’s Breakers, Boca Raton’s Cloisters, Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel, and Key West’s Casa Marina. In those Roaring Twenties and Thirties, the sleek and soaring lines of the art deco movement debuted on Miami Beach, creating what is now the world’s largest cluster of art deco architecture. As the years passed, some of those hotels and all of the art deco structures moldered, but in the prosperous 1950s and ‘60s, Florida boomed again. Old hotels were restored and hundreds of new ones were built, turning South Florida into the world’s most famous resort.

Beginning in 1896, blacks provided the primary labor force for the building of Miami. Restrictive clauses in land deeds confined blacks to the northwest section of Miami which became known as Colored Town. This community, today’s Overtown, established its own stores and businesses, schools, churches, a hospital, library, newspaper, and social organizations. As was the case in the rest of the nation, Miami did not face segregation and civil rights issues until the decades following World War II.

The outbreak of rioting in the spring of 1980 is evidence that the struggle for equal rights continues. As thousands of people moved to Miami in the early 1900s, the need for more land quickly became apparent. Up until then, the Everglades extended to three miles west of Biscayne Bay. Beginning in 1906, canals were dredged to remove some of the water from these lands. In 1916, a few farsighted individuals recognized the need to preserve some of the unique Everglades environment. In that year, Royal Palm Park, the nucleus of the Everglades National Park, was dedicated. Another area of land, Miami Beach, was poised for development in 1913 when a 2-mile wooden bridge built by John Collins was completed. A major developer of Miami Beach was Carl Fisher, a millionaire from Indiana, who built hotels, golf courses and polo fields, realizing the potential of South Florida as a major tourist resort.