Founding of Miami

Miami, on Biscayne Bay in southeastern Florida, was originally the home of the Tequesta people. Spanish and later American forts and trading posts appeared on the Miami River in the early nineteenth century, but the area remained sparsely populated for decades. Its growth came in the 1890s, when Julia Tuttle, a local landowner, persuaded the railroad developer Henry Flagler to extend his railway to the area, and the city was incorporated in 1896. A real-estate boom in the 1920s was followed by a devastating hurricane in 1926 and the Depression. Miami grew rapidly after the Second World War and especially with the arrival of Cuban exiles after 1959, which gave it a distinctive Latin American character.

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