Fort Lauderdale

About Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale is a city on Florida's southeast Atlantic coast in Broward County, about 25 miles north of Miami. It takes its name from a series of forts built along the New River during the Seminole Wars in the late 1830s. Settlement grew slowly until the Florida East Coast Railway arrived in the 1890s, and pioneer trader Frank Stranahan's riverside trading post, now a museum, is the city's oldest surviving building. Fort Lauderdale incorporated in 1911 and boomed in the 1920s as developers dredged miles of canals through the mangroves.

Those canals, more than 160 miles of them, earned Fort Lauderdale the nickname the Venice of America, and they are lined with waterfront homes and yachts; the city is one of the world's great yachting centers and hosts a huge international boat show each fall. Port Everglades, on the south side of town, is one of the busiest cruise ports anywhere. Today Fort Lauderdale is a city of around 180,000 people with a lively downtown along the New River.

For visitors, the beach is the main attraction: a wide stretch of golden sand backed by the palm-lined Wave Wall promenade. Las Olas Boulevard links downtown to the shore with restaurants, galleries and boutiques, the Riverwalk follows the New River past historic sites and museums, and water taxis cruise the canals. The Bonnet House Museum and Gardens preserves an old Florida estate between the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, while Hugh Taylor Birch State Park offers shady trails right next to the beach.