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While the Indian problem had receded by the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the site of today’s Miami consisted of only a few families as late as the 1890s. Dade County, stretching from Indian Key to the Jupiter Inlet, contained less than 1,000 persons by the beginning of the century’s last decade. Undoubtedly, the area was among America’s last frontiers.

Miami Is Born

But change was in the air. Small homesteading communities were arising along Biscayne Bay and many influential pioneers were among the incoming residents. Julia Tuttle moved to the area in 1891 and purchased the Fort Dallas land to build her home. A woman of great foresight, Tuttle prophesied that a great city would someday arise in the area, one that would become a center of trade with South America and a gateway to the Americas.

Across the river from Tuttle lived William and Mary Brickell and their large family. The Brickells arrived in Miami at the outset of the 1870s, and quickly established themselves as successful Indian traders as well as shrewd real estate investors.

Meanwhile, Henry M. Flagler, a multi-millionaire from his partnership with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, was extending his railroad south along Florida’s east coast, and developing cities and resorts along the way. In 1894, Flagler’s railway entered West Palm Beach.

During the following year, in the wake of two devastating freezes that wreaked havoc on Florida’s farm crops but failed to reach Miami, Flagler met with Julia Tuttle. He agreed to extend his railway to Miami in exchange for hundreds of acres of prime real estate from Tuttle and the Brickells.

Additionally, the great industrialist agreed to lay the foundations for a city on both sides of the Miami River and build a magnificent hotel near the confluence of the river and Biscayne Bay. Flagler had been quietly planning this extension long before his fateful meeting with Tuttle, since he wanted to bring his railroad all the way to Key West and link it with other parts of his vast system, which included a steamboat line and a resort in the Bahamas.

The first train entered Miami on April 13, 1896. By then a city was arising on both sides of the Miami River. The heart of the community was a retail district along Avenue D (today’s Miami Avenue) emerging north of the river, in an area of piney woods.

On July 28, 1896, 344 registered voters, a sizable percentage of whom were black laborers, packed into the Lobby, a wood frame building on Avenue D standing near the Miami River. They voted for the incorporation of the City of Miami, along with the Flagler slate of candidates.

By then, the trappings and institutions that accompany developing communities everywhere, such as a newspaper, bank, stores, and churches, had appeared. What separated Miami from other frontier communities was Henry M. Flagler’s magnificent Royal Palm Hotel.

Standing five stories tall (its rotunda in the center added another story to the structure), the yellow frame building was topped by a red mansard roof and counted among many prominent features a 578-foot long verandah. The building contained more than 400 rooms.

Soon after it opened in January 1897, the Royal Palm became a popular resort for America’s Gilded Age princes, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and the Vanderbilt family.

Miami endured a series of traumas during its first years as a city. A fire destroyed much of the business district on the morning after Christmas 1896. Restless, troublesome and even violent troops among the 7,500 men bivouacked in Camp Miami during the Spanish-American War of 1898 threatened the residents of the small community. The following year a fearsome yellow fever epidemic forced many families out of their homes to seek temporary, safe housing until the disease subsided.

In spite of these perils, early Miami grew quickly and by the beginning of the new century, the fledgling city contained 1,681 residents. Tourism and agriculture represented its chief economic endeavors. New neighborhoods appeared on both sides of the river. Miami had shed its frontier ambiance for that of a small southern town.

Significant projects in the century’s first decade dictated future directions. Henry Flagler succeeded in securing federal funds for the construction of a deep water channel as well as for the dredging of the Government Cut, connecting Miami’s new bayfront port with the Atlantic Ocean lying several miles east of it. Flagler was also instrumental in connecting the Keys through the extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, some 120 miles south of Miami.