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.
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.
