Long before the forts, the New River belonged to the Tequesta, who lived along its banks for more than a thousand years before European contact; by 1763, after generations of disease introduced by the Spanish, only a few remained. In the early nineteenth century the Seminole lived and farmed in the region, and it was to seize that ground, during a war of removal, that the army built the New River forts in 1838. The conflict and the forts passed, but the river stayed — a dark, winding tidal channel running out of the Everglades to the sea, the feature around which everything here would eventually be built.
The water has defined the city ever since. Fort Lauderdale grew through a Second World War naval-air era and a postwar tourism boom into the place it is now: a major Atlantic beach destination, a great cruise port at Port Everglades, and a center of the yachting world, host to one of the largest boat shows anywhere. The New River still runs through downtown past the Riverwalk and Las Olas Boulevard, and the roughly 165 miles of canals that thread the city remain its signature — liquid streets that earned the Venice of America its name.
Why People Visit Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale offers South Florida at its most nautical — a real beach city laced with canals, with a historic river downtown, a great cruise port, and the yachting world's calendar built around it. Visitors come for the water, the beaches, and the Venice-of-America canals, and stay for Las Olas, the Riverwalk, and the easy coastal pace. From the New River to the sand, it rewards a day or a week. It is bright, nautical, and genuinely South Florida.
