Miami

Early street scene, Miami, 1896; source: State Archives of Florida, Florida MemoryThe purpose of the Expedition was to cross the Everglades from Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast to Miami on the Atlantic Coast. Miami was an unincorporated community in 1892 that was sparsely populated. For much of the 19th Century, only a handful of settlers lived at the mouth of the Miami River. In 1830, Richard Fitzpatrick purchased lands there and operated a slave plantation for a few years before abandoning it when the Second Seminole War started. During the war, in the late 1830s, the U.S. Army established Fort Dallas on this property. In the 1840s after the end of the war, Fitzpatrick's nephew, William English, began operating a slave plantation on the land once again. He made improvements to the fort and platted the "Village of Miami" on the south side of the Miami River. English left the area in the 1850s and the U.S. Army once again used Fort Dallas during the Third Seminole War until 1858. Over the next few decades the population grew very slowly. In the 1890s, Julia Tuttle and the Brickell family owned much of the land of the Miami settlement. They encouraged Henry Flagler to build his Florida East Coast Railway southward to Miami, and in 1896 the railroad was completed. Miami's population grew steadily from only about 300 when the city incorporated in 1896 to almost 1,700 by 1900. The city's population really exploded during the Land Boom of the 1920s, reaching 110,000 by 1930. The advance group of the Expedition party reached April 5 and remained in the region until their departure on April 12.

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For other topics referenced in the Expedition texts, please refer to the Index to Subjects and Names.
1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts, 2015