Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Fort Lauderdale is a city in southeastern Florida and seat of Broward County. The city is located where the New River enters the Atlantic Ocean. Fort Lauderdale is a major yachting center and a beach and fishing resort. Called the Venice of America, the city has an extensive network of inlets and canals that, with the New River, provides more than 165 miles (266 kilometers) of navigable waterways. These waterways include a portion of the Intracoastal Waterway that passes through the city. The city’s nearby artificial harbor, Port Everglades, has the deepest water of any port on the United States Atlantic coast south of Norfolk, Virginia. Fort Lauderdale’s beaches draw visitors from around the world, and tourism is a leading contributor to the economy. South Beach has a promenade of wide walkways for enjoyment of the city’s climate. The city is served by Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Florida, sometimes called the Peninsula State, consists of a large low-lying peninsula and, in the northwest, a strip of land known as the panhandle. It is a region of low, rolling hills, vast swamps and marshes, numerous lakes, and extensive forests. Superimposed on this varied pattern of physical features are the farmlands, urban areas, transportation routes, and other cultural features that have transformed Florida from largely a wilderness area into one of the fastest-growing states in the Union. Early Inhabitants of Florida There were an estimated 350,000 Native Americans in what is now Florida when Europeans first arrived early in the 16th century. They belonged to three major nations, the Calusa along the southwestern coast, the Timucua in the northern half of the peninsula, and the Apalachee where the peninsula joins the panhandle. Peoples dominated by the Calusa lived along the southeastern coast. All were settled agricultural peoples, as skilled with the hoe as they were with canoes or with bows and arrows. They lived in villages, where they cultivated corn, beans, and other crops. Noted warriors, they fiercely resisted early attempts to bring them under submission, but coexisted peacefully with the Spaniards for most of the first 198 years of Spanish occupation. Diseases introduced by the European explorers drastically reduced the populations of these Native Americans. They had no resistance to pathogens such as measles, smallpox, and typhoid fever that Europeans normally survived. The Native Americans also lost ground because of slaving raids by English forces from South Carolina and Georgia. By mid-18th century these nations no longer existed. The modern Native Americans of Florida are the Seminole, originally Creek from the Georgia-Alabama border, who entered Florida in the period 1716 to 1767. Today they have five reservations in the state.