A citrus grower’s city grew into a banked tropics hub
Miami sits on southeast Florida’s coast as the state’s second-largest city proper, with about 442,000 residents in recent counts. Finance, trade, and culture animate a metro that draws over four million visitors yearly—second only to New York among U.S. metros—and concentrates international banks downtown.
The Tequesta are thought to have moved to Cuba by the mid-1700s. In 1566 the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who became Florida's first governor, asserted Spanish possession, and a mission followed a year later. Apart from British rule between 1763 and 1783, Spain held Florida until ceding it to the United States in 1821. Fort Dallas went up on the Miami River in 1836, making the area a battleground of the Second Seminole War.
Julia Tuttle owned the land the city would occupy, then known as Biscayne Bay Country. When the Great Freeze of 1894–95 killed crops across Florida but spared hers, she persuaded Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway south, earning the title mother of Miami. The city incorporated on 28 July 1896 with just over 300 residents.
Bahamian migrants and African Americans made up 40 percent of the early population and did much of the road and hotel building, yet faced intimidation, and the 1920s police chief H. Leslie Quigg openly belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Growth so fast that winter visitors called it magic gave the city its nickname, though the land-boom collapse, the 1926 hurricane and the Depression slowed it. As a wartime base against German submarines, it reached 172,172 people by 1940. Cuban refugees arrived after 1959, and in 1972 Miami hosted both national party conventions while the Dolphins played their perfect season.
The metro area now holds about 6.39 million people and produced $533.7 billion in 2023. The city has over 300 high-rises, the country's third-largest skyline, and 70.2 percent of residents are Hispanic or Latino. Jackson Memorial, with 1,547 beds, is the nation's largest hospital, and PortMiami is the world's busiest cruise port.
Source: Miami
