History of Florida
Statehood
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Until 1821, Florida remained under the control of the government of Spain but the US Territories of Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana were its covetous next-door neighbors. It was clear that the US wanted the Spaniards out of Florida and was willing to consider any means, including warfare, to acquire the rich land.
House Of RefugeAs it turned out, Spain could no longer afford to support its vast colonial empire and from 1784 until 1821 (when Spain ceded Florida to the US), Florida became the setting for constant international intrigues as well as a target for greedy adventurers who wished to establish their own personal empires with Florida’s vast resources. The first known post-war non-Indian settlers were Washington Jenkins, keeper of the House of Refuge that was built for ship-wrecked sailors in 1876 in the area of the future Birch State Park, and John J. Brown, a pig farmer who won a tainted legislative election that same year and departed for Tallahassee, never to return.
By 1891 there were enough settlers to justify a post office, and tow years later came the first of those man-made links with the outside world that would allow Broward to grow. It was the Bay Stage Line, operating over a shell-rock road between Hypoluxo at the south end of Lake Worth and Lemon City, now part of Miami. Passengers on the two-day trip stopped overnight at New River. An Ohioan named Frank Stranahan arrived to run bot the overnight camp and the New River ferry.
The coming of the stages also brought to an end the era of the legendary “barefoot mailmen” who, for seven years, had carried the mail from Hypoluxo to Miami by walking along the beach. For five dollars a head, they would let others walk with them. But, the stages were to be even more short-lived. When Henry M. Flagler learned that Miami was unaffected by the great freeze of February 1895, he decided to extend the FEC south from Palm Beach. On February 22, 1896, the first train reached New River.
Besides making it possible for more settlers to reach Broward, the railroad also made it necessary. If Flagler were to reap any return on the state and private lands which he had been given in return for laying the rails, it was absolutely necessary that he find prospective buyers. His land companies sought immigrants both in the North and in the South. The were not hard to find. Swedes from the Northeast formed the nucleus of Hallandale, and Danes from the Midwest founded Dania. Southern farmers, lured by better land and milder winters, joined the Danes and Swedes and founded Pompano and Deerfield, besides.
Much of the fieldwork was done by blacks from either the South or the Bahamas. Dania became the area’s first incorporated community in 1904, followed by Pompano in 1908 and Fort Lauderdale in 1911. All three pre-date Broward County itself, which was formed from portions of Dade and Palm Beach counties in 1915 and named for former Florida governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.
The choice was logical. During his 1905-1909 term as governor, Broward championed Everglades drainage and got the dredges working on the south and north New River canals. While results in the Everglades were mixed, the drainage opened up much of today’s urban Broward County for development, first as agricultural land and, later, as residential.
The fruits of this work would come later. With the exception of a flurry in Fort Lauderdale’s Progresso area in connection with a 1911 land drawing, growth was slow and steady until the prosperity and optimism that followed World War I set off the first of Broward’s two great booms. In numbers, this boom pales in comparison to the greater one that followed World War II.
While the county’s population went from 5,135 to 14,242 between 1920 and 1925 for a gain of 9,107, the average gain per year between 1950 and 1970 was 26,808, as the population soared form 83,933 to 620,100. But numbers are not everything. The 1920s boom set the prevailing pattern in two important ways. First, it marked the advent of the developer city in which a single plan would encompass an entire community rather than a single neighborhood.
