The city of Miami was officially incorporated on this day in 1896. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon was the first European to arrive in 1513, but it took over half a century before settlement got underway. The original population of Native Americans rapidly died from disease; by the late 1700s, more tribes had moved into the area after being pushed south by the expanding United States, becoming a whole new tribe called the Seminoles. When the U.S. purchased Florida in 1819, they waged war with the tribe. It wasn’t until 1842, after the wars were over, that a proper town was founded in the area named Miami. The big driver of growth from there was something very Floridian.
As their ubiquitous license plates will remind you, Florida grows a lot of citrus fruit. Julia Tuttle, who owned a plantation on the north bank of the river across from the town, was determined to make the area a trading hub. She convinced a railway magnate to build tracks to Miami. When trains started chugging into the station in 1896, residents held a vote to incorporate the “City of Miami,” with just 444 residents.
For three decades, the city’s population swelled thanks to tourism and trade before hurricanes set the local economy back massively on the eve of the Great Depression. The city was rebuilt and began to prosper again as soldiers flocked to the area for training during World War II. Waves of Cuban immigration followed the 1959 revolution on the island spearheaded by Fidel Castro, followed by new populations from other Caribbean and Latin American nations, lending the city its rather unique flavor (figuratively and literally — some darn good food there).
