For all the growth, the old riverfront heart is still legible. The Stranahan House keeps watch on the New River at the foot of Las Olas, the historic village by the river preserves the town's earliest buildings, and the water that drew the Tequesta, frustrated the army, and made the developers rich still organizes everything. Fort Lauderdale wears its history lightly, but it is all there, just below the bright surface of the canals.
Today Fort Lauderdale is the Venice of America — a city of canals and yachts, a great beach and a busy river, with a frontier fort and a trading post somewhere underneath it all. Its story runs from a Tequesta river and an 1838 Seminole-War fort, through Frank Stranahan's 1893 trading post and the 1920s canal boom, to the yachting and cruise capital it is now. Our Fort Lauderdale designs gather that identity into wearable form — the alligator emblem, the New River, and the canals. Fort Lauderdale, Florida: the Venice of America, on the New River where the city began.
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.
