Miami
History
The name "Miami" means "Big Water" in the language of the Calusa Indians, the major Native American tribe inhabiting the region when the Spanish arrived there in the sixteenth century. Although the Spanish never really succeeded in the settling the region, the Calusa had been wiped out by the early eighteenth century, from their lack of resistance to the diseases the Europeans brought with them, and the Creeks and Seminoles became the dominant tribes. The British gained control of Florida in 1763, during the French and Indian War, but the Spanish won it back 20 years later, only to lose it
Hostility by the Seminoles slowed settlement in the region until their banishment to the Everglades in 1842 and even afterward. As northern Florida prospered, the south remained sparsely inhabited and undeveloped. The area of present-day Miami, at the mouth of the Miami River, was part of a tract of land belonging to a plantation owner and also the site of Fort Dallas, which became a permanent outpost of the U.S. army in 1849. Following the Civil War (1861–65) two entrepreneurs, William Brickell and J.W. Ewan bought the land and established a trading post that eventually grew into a commercial center.
However, development of Miami began in earnest when the wealthy widow Julia Sturdivant Tuttle bought a large tract of land in the area and convinced Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railroad there. The railway construction was completed in 1896, and Miami was incorporated in the same year. Another major advance in transportation—expanded highway access—brought the city a building boom in the 1920s, when its population jumped from 30,000 to 200,000 people within five years. The boom ended with a devastating hurricane in 1926, but the infrastructure put in place in the preceding years had laid the groundwork for future development.
Industrialization and military bases came to the city during World War II (1939–45), leading to another population boom, and Miami has grown steadily ever since. The face of the city was changed forever when Fidel Castro (b. 1927) came to power in Cuba in 1959, and over 150,000 Cubans flocked to Miami over the following decade. Today it is a bilingual city and the only major city in the United States with a majority Hispanic population. In the 1990s, Hurricane Andrew, rising crime, and inter-ethnic tensions led to the exodus of some 100,000 non-Hispanic whites from Greater Miami, leaving the city struggling with growing social and fiscal problems.
