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.
Fort Lauderdale incorporated as a city on March 27, 1911, a small riverfront town of a few hundred people. What transformed it came in the 1920s, when developers dredged the low, wet land behind the beach into a lattice of canals and finger islands, selling waterfront lots where there had been mangrove and marsh. The dredging gave the city its identity and its nickname — the “Venice of America,” a place where the streets were matched by water and nearly every house could keep a boat at its back door. The 1926 hurricane and the collapse of the Florida land boom ended the frenzy, but the canals remained.
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.
